Narratives from criminal trials in Scotland

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NARRATIVES

-Z/ 7 /'

CRIMINAL TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.

JOHN HILL BURTON,

AUTHOR OF " THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME," " THE LIVES OF SIMON LORD
LOVAT, AND DUNCAN FORBES OF CULLODEN," &C.

in two vcfi/vicAi£ .»';
• ■:•••

VOL I.

LONDON :
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1852.^

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

Whoever professes to disclose from criminal
records anything that has both importance and
novelty to recommend it, will generally need no
further excuse for offering it to the public. There
can be no source of information more fruitful in
incidents which have the attraction of picturesque-
ness along with the usefulness of truth. In every
country in which there is even a pretence of ad-
ministering justice, the social circle where crime is
to be sought and punished, is sniveled to a sudden
and searching investigation of its ^kr^epts' ajad con-
dition. The Asmodeus of the^Ja^jcatoheji ifefe/
group by surprise, ere it has/time/to/.y&l ijteelf 'hi/
conventionalities and adjust 'Ap^^Qice^ for 'pablic
view. The administration of criminaf jp$tic£ #J may
thus be said to cut to the very centre of society, and
lay bare all its strata. Besides the reference of every
criminal trial to some main central event, in which
the passions and propensities of mankind are deve-
loped in their most emphatic shape and deepest hue,
each investigation reveals, collaterally, the social se-
crets of the day — from the state-mysteries, guarded
by the etiquette and policy of courts, down to those

IV INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

characteristics of humble life, which are removed
from ordinary notice by their native obscurity.

Under arbitrary laws, the knowledge thus ex-
tracted is generally retained for generations in offi-
cial secrecy, and may, or may not, be brought to
light in subsequent ages, by persons who do not in-
herit the original motives for concealment. But
whether found in the mouldy registers of secret in-
quiries, or developed in the broad daylight of a public
trial, the details of such investigations are a great
mine of impressive knowledge. The contents of the
following pages have been drawn from both these
sources. The author offers them to the public, under
the impression that they develop remarkable social
conditions, and throw new light on the secret im-
pulses of historical .events ; but whether he has thus
formed a jus^c*c}u\Ju^ion, is a question for others to

decide/. \r«: - ;##

made use of, had accumulated
along with much other mis-
cellatt&3^;m£$^/ Sn ## the pursuit of historical pro-
jects. ?et£$TAg *to Scotland, which he hopes yet to
realise". The authorities drawn from are indicated,
here and there, in the usual manner. And it will
be seen, that while some of them are yet in manu-
script, several others, owing to the limited circle for
whose use they have been printed, may be consi-
dered as in the same condition to the world at large,
however well they may be known to investigators
in peculiar corners of Scottish history.

CRIMINAL TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.

PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE CLAN GREGOR-

If one were desired to point out upon the map, on
no surer ground than the mere physical character
of the country, that spot which must have been the
main battle-field between the Celtic ra$ea living
among the mountains, and the peopl§^of Saxon
origin who tilled the plain, he jreptiid fcat^ndly
point to the mass of broken mountains, clustering
about Loch Lomond and Loch Catrine,.' which
strike from the great mountain ranges of the north
right into the most fertile plains and valleys of the
south. In the more northern districts of Perthshire
and the wilds of Inverness, the fastnesses of the
Highland tribes were separated by dreary districts
of undulating moors and low hills from the fields
of their natural enemies, while the inhabitants of

VOL. i. # B

2 PBOCBEDINGS AGAINST

the isles and the far west were still more distant
both from the field of plunder and the arm of the
avenger. But the country of the Macgregors rises
so abruptly from the rich plains of the Lenox and
Menteith, that the untamed freebooter could look
down from his mountain fastness into the bosom of
that thriving industry in which he was to find his
prey — could count the cattle which were destined
for his spit, and watch the yellowing of the grain,
from which he some day hoped to distribute bread
among his hungry children, and cheer the idle
winter with liberal cups of usquebah.. In a country
where the transition from soft, alluvial, fertile fields
to rocky inaccessible mountains is so sudden, the
industrious -Stispty would keep to the one and the
pred&tbiyjCelVib the other, as naturally as the but
.••. .r i_ ^ ^m* i_i. and the tiger to the jungle.

between the people of the
pfcttn i * # ail4 VKofe'of 'the mountain is scarcely less dis-
tft^f/tBan it was of old, though its colours have
varied. The ancient spirit of predatory ferocity —
the thirst for vengeance — the inextinguishable hatred
and scorn of the civilised man and his ways, have long
departed* But they have left — whether from poli-
tical causes or peculiarity of race we need not here
inquire— the inanimate body of their old barbarism,
still unillunrined by the lights of advancing civilisa-

THE. CLAN GBEGOB. 3

tion. Pressed on by social progress in its most
active and aggressive forms — frequented annually
by swarms of tourists — studded with the villas of
affluent lovers of mountain scenery — the dwellers
in these regions preserve the sloth and listlessness
of the tropical savage. The tourist on the top of
a coach, crossing the Highland line near Doune or
the Leven, feels as if some phantasmagoric change
had taken place in human as well as inanimate
nature. Up to the very entrance of the pass he
has driven through high fanning, manufacturing
activity, cleanness, independence, and affluence.
From these he is at once introduced to a new lan-
guage and a new people — to indolence, servility,
and squalid filth.

To their predatory occupants the mountain fast-
nesses of Balquhidder and the Trossachs were all
the more valuable from their vicinity to a rich
industrious country — an advantage similar to that
enjoyed by the German freebooters on their great
navigable rivers, or by the highwayman who had
his place of safety near a well-frequented road. The
same circumstance would make the Lowlanders all
the more resolute in their efforts to rid themselves
of neighbours so unpleasant. As long, however, as
there existed throughout the vast mountain districts
of Scotland a race, half-independent, with arms in
b2

4 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

their hands, predatory habits, and a traditional
hatred of the governing race, — so long was it in the
nature of things that the southern frontier of the
Highlands would be occupied by them. The two-
fold character of the country, its inaccessible rug-
gedness, and its close vicinity to tracts affluent in
booty, made this a physical and moral necessity.
Until the Highlanders were altogether subdued,
the most dangerous and ferocious among them
would be found precisely in this district. Hence
came the ever deepening and ever vain ferocity of
the war of extermination carried on for two cen-
turies between the government and the Clan Gregor.
The strange incidents by which it was traditionally
surrounded have been spun into many a romantic
tale and work of genius. But even from the au-
thentic official documents in which the struggle is
recorded, one may find a history as striking as it is
solemn and instructive.

It is unnecessary on this occasion to inquire into
the truth of the traditionary histories which claim
for the Macgregors a royal descent. They belonged
to those tribes chiefly of Celtic, but partly of Norse
origin, who carried on a long struggle with the
monarchs of Lowland Scotland for the establishment
of a separate nationality. The history of this
struggle has yet to be written, in the spirit of those

THE CLAN GREGOB. 5

who can discharge from history conventionalisms
about " establishing the authority of the law and the
strength of the executive," and the like, which have
a meaning in constructed and consolidated govern-
ments, but have no more reference to the early chaotic
elements from which nations have been gradually
developed, than the orders of architecture have to
the stratification of rocks. We need go no further
into the question here, than to notice that the feel-
ings of the Highlander and Lowlander towards each
other were embittered by traditions of national
conflict, ending in the subjugation of the one race
by the other. If this feeling doubtless lingered,
and that with considerable strength and vitality,
down to the time when the Clan Gregor became so
conspicuous in the statute-book and the criminal
records, it became gradually aided and strengthened
by another and even more powerful cause of
animosity. It came to be the Lowlander's way of
enjoying existence and the benefits which the
material world afford, to labour and grow rich. The
Highlander, on the other hand, found it more con-
ducive to his taste and circumstances to watch his
Lowland neighbour's accumulating wealth, and take
possession of it for his own purposes when a suitable
opportunity occurred. Between people whose views
in life were so incompatible, there could be no more
harmony and co-operation than between the shep-

6 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

herd's dog and the wolf. The utilitarian objects of
the attackers and defenders were, in reality, the main
inspiration of the conflicts with the Macgregors; and
thus, however picturesque they may seem in their
bloody results, a certain air of nutritive homeliness
— - a hungry hankering after bread and beef — is
ever at the root of the conflict ; and recals Waverley's
regret, that his romantic mission to a Highland out-
law should have had no more heroic impulse than
the recovery of the baron's stolen cattle.

The earliest notice which we find of this pre-
dominating propensity is in 1533, when Patrick
MacCoule-Kere Macgregor, with his two brothers,
" in company with sundry rebels of the Clan Gre-
gor," are charged with stealing forty cows from the
Earl of Menteith.* For some length of time the
charges of such acts of " stouthrief," " spulzie," &c,
became tiresomely uniform — the special heads of
cattle thus " lifted" being enumerated and classified
with the precision of the more recent species of.
agricultural prize lists.

But while the origin and main source of the
fierce conflict with the law, recorded in the follow-
ing pages, was unquestionably this vulgar, but all-
powerful one — the desire of food and other useful
plunder — it was accompanied by many incidents of
pure savageness, one of which, however well it may
* Ktcaim's Criminal Trials, i, 164.

THE CLAN GREGOB. 7

be already known to the reader, must be briefly
mentioned. Some rievers liaving been caught and
punished by Drummond, the king's deer-keeper,
resolved on vengeance; and having waylaid Drum-
mond, when occupied in providing venison for the
festivals in honour of the reception of the Queen,
Anne of Denmark, they cut off his head. Pro-
ceeding homeward with their trophy, they sought
the hospitality of Stewart of Ardvoirlich, whose
wife was the murdered keeper's sister. Stewart
being absent, his wife could offer them, as the legend
proceeds, no better hospitality than bread and cheese.
Offended by so sordid a feast — though in the High-
lands it would seem, that at a much later date cheese
was in the category of luxuries — the murderers, in
savage sport, placed the keeper's head on the table,
with a morsel of the bread and cheese in its mouth.
The poor woman fled from the house distracted, and
the murderers, conveying the head to the church of
Balquhidder, the Macgregors there laid their hands
on it, and solemnly swore to support the deed that
had been done. If there had been any doubt of the
truth of this legend, it would have been dispelled
by Sir Walter Scott, who publishes in his notes to
" The Children of the Mist," an act of the privy
council in the year 1589, where it is narrated in
foil; and the Clan Gregor are said to have "laid

8 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

their hands upon the pow (poll or head), and in
heathenish and barbarous manner swore to defend
the authors of the said murder, in most proud con-
tempt of our sovereign lord and his authority, and
in evil example to other wicked liinmers to do the
like, if this shall be suffered to remain unpunished."

The remedy sought by the government against
these depredations and outrages, consisted in
strengthening the hands of the injured parties, and
of all who hated the Macgregors, and hounding
them on to vengeance.

In a royal letter to the privy council, presented in
November, 1611, the economy of the system which
had then been in operation for nearly a century, is
thus laid down on the highest authority. ( ( We send
you now home the Earl of Argyle, to make an
end according to his promise of that service which
he hath already begun. ... As to the service itself,
we are thus resolved, that as the connivance at
those and the like malefactors might justly be ac-
counted a great iniquity, so the utter extirpation
of them all, and every one in particular, would be
a work too troublesome. And therefore we have
thought good on some to execute justice, and the
rest to take to mercy; and as we will not have our
justice satisfied with the meanest and basest persons,
so we would have special choice made of the most

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 9

notorious malefactors, to be an example thereof in
this present business. For which effect we would
have you to crave the advice, as well of the said
Earl of Argyle, as of the gentlemen and others newt
inhabiting unto them, and who have been most en-
damaged by them, by whose information you may
likewise learn what particular persons are most fit
to be taken to mercy, and which not." In more
than one of the proclamations there are reproachful
complaints about the tardiness of those enemies of
the Macgregors, who had " promised to go to the
fields and enter in action and blood with them;"
inciting them to exertion, and requiring " that
they shall do some notable service against the
Clan Gregor before his majesty be burdened with
any charges in this service."

This seemed a cheap and simple remedy, and a
doubly efficacious one, once it not only set at work
effective and powerful instruments for the extirpa-
tion of the obnoxious tribe, but it kept in con-
genial occupation restless spirits who might other-
wise be flinging against the government, and
sometimes ended successfully in the mutual exter-
mination of two troublesome clans. Thus the house
of Argyle, and several minor families, whose Low-
land property suffered from the ravages of the moun-
taineers, obtained commissions, or warrants, to attack,

10 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

imprison, and slaughter them. Hie earliest of this
series of warrants appears to occur in 1563. There is
a quaint, foul-mouthedness about these documents.
Our legislative and official phraseology was never
complimentary to the Celts. In Ireland they were
cosherers, tamers, tones, robbers, and rapparees. In
Scotland they were limmers and Hidand thieves, or
loons and sorners. One legislative expression had.
become common to the two countries — " his ma-
jesty's Irish rebels," or "his majesty's Hieland
rebels," as the case might be. Against the persons
thus stigmatised, the warrants, or licenses of civil
war as they might perhaps be more justly called,
gave those authorised to enforce them irresponsible
powers — the right to pursue the people in all places
and with all weapons — to seize them alive or dead r
meaning to ensnare or slay them — to attack and
destroy their houses, a privilege inferring the siege
of places of strength, and the reckless destruction of
the turf-houses of the ordinary people. The holder
of such a warrant was not only entitled to hound
out his own followers against the devoted clan, but He
might call on every neighbour to aid him, and raise
the whole district in which he lived to revenge
their injuries, and fight out their hereditary feuds,
as an acceptable service to the government.

Afterwards there may be more to say about the ex-

THE CLAN GREGOB. 11

press terms of these warrants, when it will be found
that they failed in accomplishing their object; in
feet, it was an object that could not be accomplished*
So long as the Celts bore arms, and preferred plun-
der to industry, they would occupy those rocky
fastnesses, so conveniently close to the choice fruits
of Lowland industry. Nothing but the extinction
of the whole race, or their subjugation to the peace-
ful pursuit of the sheep-farmer, could prevent the
most advantageous post for cattle stealing through-'
out all the Highlands from being occupied by cattle-
stealers, whether they called themselves Macgregor,
or any other ortus regibw name. And hence came
that system of persecution, ever increasing in in-
genious cruelty, as every sanguinary effort failed,
in such a fashion as ought to have taught think-
ing men that success in the main object of their
efforts was hopeless.

The government did not even profess to select
the instruments of its vengeance. Whoever desired
to join in hunting the Macgregors had but to pay
the usual fees for obtaining a commission of jus-
ticiary to that end, when it was cheerfully handed
over to him. The official expression came to be,
that such a one had * purchased a commission of
justiciary for pursuit of the Clan Gregor," just as a
person is said to purchase a license for pursuit of

14 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

also in respect of the great grudge and hatred
standing likewise betwixt the said Laird of Ardin-
caple and the said Robert, who having bereft his
own mother, whom the said Laird of Ardincaple
has now married of her whole living, he has by
order of law recovered the same furth of his hands:
for the which cause the said Robert seeks to have
his advantage of him, has given up kindness, and
denounced his evil will to him with solemn vows
of revenge."*

The ravages of the Macgregors came at length to
a climax, in an event which figures in Scottish history
as the battle of Glenfruin or the Raid of the Lennox.
It makes its appearance 071 the criminal records in
the trial of Alaster Macgregor of Glenstray , Duncan
Pudrache Macgregor, and the owners of a varied
list of similar names, arraigned before the court of
justiciary on the 20th of January, 1604, for treason,
stouthrief, and fire-raising. It was set forth that,
" having concluded the destruction of Alexander
Golquhoun, of Luss, his kin, friends, and alia, and
the haill surname of the Buchanans, and to harrie
their lands, they convened the Clan Chameron, the
Clan Vourich, and divers other broken men and
sorners,t to the number of four hundred men, or

* Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, i., 390.
t " Broken men " was an expression applied generally to all
the Border and Highland depredators; but in its limited sense

THE CLAN GEEGOR. 15

thereby, all bodin in feir of weir (*.e., set out in
Warlike array) with hakbats, pistollettes, morions,
mail-coats, poll-axes, two-handed swords, bows,
darlochs, and other weapons." They were charged
with putting to death seven score or 140 persons, in
a partial list of whom there occurs the familiar
name of Tobias Smollett, who was, it appears, bailie
or civic magistrate of the town of Dumbarton*

It is said by the annalists partial to the Mac-
gregors, that they had no intention to commit any
outrage — that they proceeded to Luss for the pur-
pose of having an amicable and satisfactory arrange-
ment of difficulties, and that they were treacherously
and unexpectedly attacked by the Colquhouns.
But Highland rievers did not generally march into
the low country, four hundred strong, peaceably to
adjust differences, any more than the highwaymen
of later times presented pistols with the like object.
Nor could the differences be very easily adjusted,
since they consisted in the one party desiring the

it applied to' those who had no chief or other person to stand
surety for them. Somen or sojourners were those who had a
general partiality for living at the expense of their neighbours.
They are denounced in several acts of parliament, and one of
the year 1455 provides that, " wherever somen be found in
existence in time to come, that they be delivered to the king's
sheriffs, and that forthwith the king's justices do law upon
.them as upon a thief or never." This, it may be noticed, is an
entire statue, and a favourable specimen of what Bacon called
u the excellent taevi^y" of the old Scottish acts.

16 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

cattle, horses, and miscellaneousproperty belonging to
the other. On the other hand, the Macgregors were
charged with atrocities, of which one would fain
believe, in the absence of good evidence, that they
were not guilty. " It is reported," says Sir Walter
Scott, " that the Macgregors murdered a number
of youths, whom report of the intended battle hfrd
brought to be spectators, and whom the Colquhouns,
anxious for their safety, had shut up in a barn to
be out of danger. One account of the Macgregors
denies this circumstance altogether; another ascribes
it to the savage and bloodthirsty disposition of a
sirfgle individual, the bastard brother of the Laird
of Macgresror, who amused himself with this second
massacre of the innocents, in express disobedience
to the chief, by whom he was left their guardian
during the pursuit of the Colquhouns."* But had
such an episode occurred, we may rest sure that it
would not have been passed over in the indictment,
where there is no allusion to it. This document
contains a sufficient number of atrocities. It states,
that the greater part of the slaughter was among
prisoners who had been " tane captives by the said
Macgregors before they put violent hands on them,
and cruelly slew them," and concludes with de-
nouncing the whole as a series of " cruel, horrible,

* Notes to the " Lady of the Lake."

THE CLAN GREGOB. 17

and treasonable crimes, the like whereof was never
committed within this realm."

.It was of course difficult then, as for a century
and a half afterwards, to apprehend the Macgregors,
either by penetrating to their wilds, or inducing
them to trust themselves in the low country. One
chronicler says, that Argyle, by fair promises, in-
duced the chief to visit him during a festival, where
lie was seized and bound. The castle where this
took place stood on an island — probably it was Kii-
churn Ctotle, in Loch Awe. As a boat was convey-
ing the captive chief to the shore, he escaped, much
after the same fashion as his representative Rob
Boy in the novel, by tossing overboard the nearest
of his keepers, and taking to the water.* If the
accounts of his final recapture are to be credited,
they would say more for the cunning than the can-
dour of Argyle. The earl told the chief that if he
surrendered himself he would be seen safe to Eng-
land, or, as other authorities say, safe out of Scotland.
Emissaries were sent to accompany him southward,
ostensibly that they might protect him, a denounced
criminal, from any king's messenger who might re-
cognise in the fugitive the chief of a band of High-
land ruffians, who had slain in one raid a hundred
and forty Lowlanders. Highlanders were not at

* MS. quoted, Pitcairo, it, 435.
VOL. I. C

18 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

that time the object of pleasant interest which Sir
Walter Scott's novels and the performance of " Bob
Boy " on the London stage have since made them.
Near the borders of their mountain strongholds
they were regarded with intense tefror ; further off,
in the Lothians and in Fifeshire, they were looked
upon as the Romans looked upon the captive Gauls.
They were a people who had elsewhere a ferocity
productive of bloody events, who had been tamed
and stripped of all their danger ere they reached
these distant spots, yet imparted a thrill of interest
from association with their latent ferocity, as the
tiger is interesting in his cage. Thus the Mac-
gregor could not have well passed through the Lo-
thians without annoyance. He accepted, therefore,
in all kindness and faith, a convoy from Argyle, to
see him into English ground. This convoy crossed
the Tweed with the exiled chief, and having seen
him into English ground, according to the compact
with Argyle, were so complaisant as to see him
back again into Scottish ground, seizing him and
dragging him to the northern side of the Tweed,
where certain coadjutors were ready to receive the
betrayed chief. Some historians comment on this
event as an instance of gross treachery. The pre-
sent writer, not driven to the alternative of justify-
ing or excusing Argyle, has only to say that he

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 19

does not believe in the narrative of the incident.
Lest he may be charged with mistelling the story
to make it be discredited, it shall be told in the
words of the best and briefest of the narrators of
it, Sir James Balfour, the Lord Lyon:

" The 2nd of October, this year, the notorious
thief and rebel, Alaster Macgregor, Laird of Glen*
strae,' who had escaped the Laird of Ardkinglase's
hands, was taken by Archibald Earl of Argyle, who,
before he would yield, had promised to him to
convey him safe out of Scottish ground; to perform
which promise, he caused some servants to convey
him to Berwic, and besouth it some miles, and
bring him back again to Edinburgh, where he was
hanged with many of his kindred the 20th day of
January."*

The chief, by way of distinction, was executed a
" pin" or peg above the others. He left a confes-
sion or declaration which found its way into the
national archives. It consists mainly of a recrimi-
nation against Argyle, whom he charges with being
his Mephistophiles. This paper is, of course, worth
no more as evidence than the other recriminations
of malefactors ; but it is, at all events, curious.
It commences thus:

" I, Alaster Macgregor, of Glenstrae, confess here,

* Annals of Scotland, edited by J. Haig, L, 415.
C2

20 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

before God, that I have been persuaded, moved,
and enticed, as I am now presently accused and
troubled for. Also, if I had used counsel or command
of the man that has enticed me, I would have done
and committed sundry high murders more. For,
truly, since I was first his majesty's man,* I could
never be at an ease by my Lord of Argyle's falsity
and inventions. For he caused Maclaine and Clan-
chameron to commit hership and slaughter in my
roum (realm or domain) of Renochie, the whilk
caused my poor men thereafter to beg and steal.
Also, thereafter, he moved my brother and some of
my friends to commit both hership and slaughter
upon the Laird of Luss. Also, he persuaded my-
self with message to war against the Laird of
Buchanan, whilk I did refuse; for the whilk I was
continually boasted that he would be my unfriend.
And when I did refuse his desire on that point,
then he enticed me with other messengers, as by the
Laird of Macnachtane, and others of my friends, to
war and trouble the Laird of Luss, which I behoved
to do for his false boutgattis." This last word may
be interpreted by circumventions. Thus, nothing
but the insinuations of the subtle tempter Argyle,
would have led his innocent, unsuspecting mind to

* Alluding to his haying taken the oath, in 1596, to be " his
majesty's household man."

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 21

authorise a raid to obtain 600 oxen and 800 sheep
and goats. The " confession,* as it is termed, pro-
ceeds in the same strain, and becomes perplexed
and tedious. In one part it would appear that he
charges Argyle with a promise to spare himself, and
only sacrifice part of the clan, and compel the rest
to resign their name. " He did entice me with oft
and sundry messages, that he would make my
peace, and save my life and. lands, only to punish
certain defaulters of my kin — and my innocent
Mends to renounce their surname and live peace-
ably. Upon the which conditions he was sworn by
an oath to his friends; and they swore to me — and,
also, I have his hand-writing and warrant there-
upon." The confession winds up thus:

"And now, seeing God and man sees it is
greedyness of worldly gear which causes him to
putt at me and my kin, and not the weal of the
realm, nor to pacify the same, nor to his majesty's
honour — but to put down innocent men — to cause
poor bairns and infants to beg — and poor women to
perish for hunger when they are bereft of their gear.
The which, I pray God that these faults light not
upon his majesty hereafter, nor upon his succession.
Wherefore, I would beseech God that his majesty
knew the verity — that at this hour I would be con-
tent to take banishment with all my kin that was at

22 PKOCEEDINGS AGAINST

the Laird of Luss's slaughter, and all others of
them that any fault can be laid to their charge — and
his majesty of his mercy to let poor innocent men
and young bairns pass to liberty, and learn to live
as innocent men. The whilk I would fulfil but any
kind of fail; whilk would be more to the will of
God and his majesty's honour, nor the greedy, cruel
form that is devised, only for the love of gear, having
neither respect to God or honesty."*

Those who have been engaged in Indian war or
diplomacy know with what almost miraculous skill
the oriental semi-savage, exposed and detected in
his wiles, can assume the aspect of the simple,
dejected victim of other men's craft and ambition.
The criminal of civilised life is less successful, because
he is less self-supported — his conscience misgives
him, or he, at all events, feels himself too clearly
seen through to believe that there is anything worth
struggling for in great efforts of hypocrisy. But
among some half-civilised races, it is but a hopeful
exertion in a part of the discipline to which they
are trained, to fawn and flatter, and plead injured
innocence in the hour of adversity. Two other
great Highland chiefs — Lovat, and the old Lord
Breadalbane whose name is associated with Glencoe,
were adepts in this mystery; and Macgregor of
* Pttcairn, ii, 435.

THE CLAN GBBOOB. 23

Glenstrae appears to have been no despicable per-
former. The belief in the thorough perfidy of his
confession does not render it necessary to infer that
either the government or Argyle held perfect faith
with him. They would have thought it as pre-
posterous as to offer a fair field to a hunted wolf. .

The extreme difficulty of bringing the wild free-
booters face to face with justice, is often shown in
the number of years elapsing between the time of
the offence and the day of trial. For twenty years
after it occurred, there is a dropping series of trials
relating to the field of Glenfruin. In one strange
instance, an ally of the clan is indicted for " the
cruel murder and burning of eighteen householders
of the Clan Laren, their wives and bairns, com-
mitted forty-six years since, or thereby. Item, for
art and part of the slaughter of umwhile Hugh
Stewart, servant to my Lord of Atholl, committed
thirty years past, or thereby."* From the same
cause — the extreme difficulty of apprehending any
of the perpetrators, the criminal records contain but
faint and indistinct allusions to the invasions of the
outlaws, only sufficient to show that they must
have been a frightful scourge to the surrounding
districts. On the 28th of July, 1612, a consider-
able band of them was brought up for trial. The
• Pitcairn, ii., 440.

24 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

measures for suppressing the name of Macgregor, to
be afterwards noticed, had then been passed, and
their futility is oddly enough illustrated by the
first name on the list, which is " Gregor Beg
Macgregor." The crimes with which they were
charged are a strange mixture of the sordid and the
sanguinary, as the following specimens, stripped of
the lists of unpronounceable names with which they
are entwined, may show. The chief matters of accu-
sation are — " the treasonable raising of fire, burning
and destroying the whole houses and buildings
of Glenlocha and Achaleder; the slaughter of
Maccallean, bowman to the Laird of Glenurquhy,
with divers other persons, to the number of eight
persons; stealing of six score kine and oxen forth
of Gienlyon, committed in April, 1604; burning
and destroying of the whole houses and biggings
upon the forty merk land of Aberurchil, pertaining
to Colin Campbell ; burning of three young bairns,
daughters of John Mackessock; stealing and away*
taking of eighteen score cows, six score piece (or
head) of horses, eight score sheep and goats, per-
taining to the said Colin, and likewise for burning
of the mill of Bolquhaster, with the whole houses
and biggings upon the ground and lands, &c.; the
stealing and away-taking furth of Glenfinlas of a
great hership (plunderage) of kine and oxen, per-

THE CLAN GBEGOR. 25

taining to the Laird of Luss and his tenants; the
slaughter of umwhile John Reid, weaver, and Pa-
tric Lang, servant to the Lord of Luss; for stealing
and away-taking of a great number of goods, per-
taining to my Lord Ogelvie, furth of Glenisla; and
such like for taking and keeping of the island
called the Island of Varnoch, against his majesty's
commissioner; and harrying and oppressing of the
whole tenants and inhabitants of the country about,
taking and in-bringing of their whole goods and
bestial, to the number of eight score kine and oxen,
eighteen score sheep and goats, whilk were eaten
and slain by them within the said island." 4 In a
subsequent indictment, a parcel of the same band
are charged with art and part of the stealing of
certain kine and horses belonging to Walter Stir-
ling of Ballagan ; " art and part of the slaughter of
John Macgilliss, a fiddler, under my Lord of Tulli-
bardine; the stealing of two horses from Macin-
nerich of Cregan, and breaking of ane poor man's
house in Einaldie ; taking of the said poor man and
binding up his eyes, and stealing and away-taking
of the whole plenishing of the said house; stealing
of a cow from Donald Macconnell; being in com-
pany with Duncan Macewan Macgregor, called the
Tutor, at the burning of Aberurchel, where seven

* Pitcaira, iii, 232.

26 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

men were slain, three bairns were burnt, twenty
kine and oxen were stolen, reft, and away-taken ;
assisting and taking part with the rebels and fugi-
tives that took to the isle called Island Varnoch,
and taking into the said isle of eight score kine and
oxen, eighteen score sheep and goats, stolen, reft,
and away -taken from the inhabitants of the country
about." Finally, they are charged with " common
theft, sorning, and oppression/' The '" said island,"
where so much stolen beef and mutton was con-
sumed, is no other than " the Lonely Isle" of the
" Lady of the Lake," where

" The wild rose, eglantine, and broom,
Wasted around their rich perfume;
The birch trees waved in fragrant balm,
The aspens slept beneati} the calm."

The use made of the island as a safety retreat by
the Macgregors, or Clan Alpine, in their hour of
need, is indeed the legend round which the beauti-
ful fictions of the poem are twined; and the critic of
Scott's poetry will be glad to obtain this little insight
to the habits of those who frequented so interest-
ing a spot. We hear more of Island Varnoch
in the desperate attempts by the privy couhcil to
surround and exterminate the "sorners and lim-
mers." A proclamation, issued against them within
three months after the battle of Glenfruin, required
them to renounce their name, " and take to them

THE CLAN GREOOR. 27

some other name, and that they and none of their
posterity should call themselves Gregor or Mao-
gregor thereafter under pain of death;" and this was
confirmed on the ground that " the simple name of
Macgregor did encourage that whole clan to pre-
sume of their power, force, and strength, and did
encourage them, without reverence of the law or
fear of punishment, to go forward in their ini-
quities."

A whole series of denunciatory acts, intended to
hem the clan closer and closer in with enemies,
began in 1610. On the 6th of September, the
council announce that the extermination of the
barbarous thieves and limmers is in such excellent
hands, " that some good and happy mean is expected
in that errand." But a fear is expressed lest they
may have recourse to their old tricks, when thus
hemmed in, and may make their escape by the
lochs. All those who have boats on Loch Lomond,
Loch Goyle, and Loch Long, are therefore pro-
hibited from assisting in the flight of the Macgre-
gors, their wives, or children* Those who allow
them a passage on any pretence whatever, are to
be counted abettors in their wicked deeds, and
punished with the utmost rigour. The efforts to
cut off their flight seem to have been effectual, for
we find that they stood at bay in the safety retreat

28 PBOCEEDING8 AGAINST

on the island in Loch Catrine. " They have now,"
says the next proclamation, " amassed themselves
together, in the isle of the loch of Loch Catrine,
which they have fortified with men, victual, powder,
bullets, and other warlike furniture, intending to
keep the same as a place of war and defence, for
withstanding and resisting of his majesty's forces
appointed to pursue them. And seeing there is
now some solid and substantious course and order
set down how these wolves and thieves may be
pursued within their own den and hole by the
force and power of some of his majesty's faithful
and well-affected subjects, who freely have under-
taken the service, and will prosecute the same with-*
out any private respect or consideration, — necessary
it is for the execution of this service that the whole
boats and birlings being upon Loch Lomond be
transported from the said loch to the loch foresaid
of Loch Catrine, whereby the forces appointed for
the pursuit of the said wolves and thieves may be
transported into the said isle, which cannot goodly
be done but by the assistance of a great number of
people." The whole inhabitants of the neighbour*
ing counties between sixteen and sixty are required
to assemble for this strange labour. The Norwe-
gians, in ravaging the west coast, dragged their
galleys across the narrow low isthmus of Tarbet,

THE CLAN GREGOR. 29

that they might more easily plunder the shores of
Loch Lomond; but here it was proposed to drag
the vessels over a mountain tract of five miles!
But all was in vain. The next proclamation an-
nounces their escape, and heartily abuses those who
had undertaken to exterminate them, since there is
" not so much as ane mint or show of pursuit in*
tended against them, but the undertakers, every
one in their several discourses, doing what in them
lies to vindicate themselves from all imputation of
sloth, negligence, or neglect of duty in that point,
highly to his majesty's offence, and fostering of the
liznmers in their rebellion and wicked deeds.' 1

One of the acts of council passed in 1611
prohibited those living in the countries near the
Highlands from selling arms to Highlanders without
special authority, " to the effect, it may be clearly
understood, that the said armour is not for the use
or behoof of the Clan Gregor." A further effort was
made to take edge tools out of these mischievous
hands by a proclamation of 1613, " That no
person or persons whatsoever who are called Mao
gregors, and keep that name, and profess and avow
themselves to be of that name, shall at no time
hereafter bear nor wear any armour but a pontless
knife to cut their meat, under the pain of death." In
the same year, another proclamation required that \

\

80 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

none of the Clan Gregory even though they had
renounced their name, should convene and meet
together in any part of the kingdom in greater
number than four persona. These acts or procla-
mations were afterwards ratified by the estates of
parliament, — they " remembering how that his
sacred majesty being very justly moved with a
hatred and detestation of the barbarous murders
and insolencies committed by the Ckn Grego*
upon Iris majesty's peaceful and good subjects."

Along with these exterminating measures, there
are, as it were, tracks of blood through the council
minutes, showing that they sometimes met with
a horrible success. In the disposal of captives,
Argyle is allowed for his services " three or four
of their lives," if he desire to spare so many, but
" for the rest of those that come in will (that is,
have surrendered), if any of them have killed a
Macgregor as good as himself — two, three, or four
of them which in comparison may be equal to him
— and assuredly known to bo his deed, his majesty
is pleased lie have a remission, with the other three
or four which his majesty has granted to the Earl
of Argyle, providing also that they find sufficient
security for keeping of good order in time coming,
and such sureties as shall content the council. And
t such as are come in will, and done no service by

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 31

killing of the Macgregors, nor cannot find sufficient
surely — that then the law to have his due course,
and no favour at all to be shown.

" For such as are yet rebels and outlaws, after
the council has considered of the roll presented
unto them by my Lord Argyle, that there be no
pardon granted unto any nor taken in will, unless
he present a better head — at least one as good as his
own— or such two, three, or more as shall be en-
joined to him by the efouncil. And for Robert
Arroch, who is now chief of those who are pre-
sently out, that he be not pardoned unless he bring
in at least half a dozen of their heads."

In the same spirit are the arrangements for the
women and children. The wives were to be branded
on the face with a red-hot key. They and their
young were to be put at the disposal of the council,
and any one harbouring them was to be treated as
a Macgregor. The council intended " thereafter to
dispose of them so as they shall think best for re-
pressing such a generation, that they never come to
such a head of insolency again." The partisans of
the clan, who were spared, were required to live
within the county of Fife, that being the district of
Scotland deemed furthest from any temptation to
resume their old freebooter habits. In 1612 the
council congratulated itself that the Macgregors

32 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

still remaining at large, were "but unworthy, poor,
miserable bodies." Yet within ten years, — in' 1621,
the council are as deeply perplexed as ever, and find
that " whereas there is now a new brood and gene-
ration of this clan risen up, which daily increases in
number and force, and are begun to have their
meetings, and goes in troops athwart the country
armed with all offensive weapons, and some of the
leaders of them, who once gave their obedience and
found caution, are broken loose, and have com-
mitted sundry disorders in the country;" and then,
getting more eloquent and indignant, the council
denounce them thus: u Preferring the beastly trade
of blood, theft, reiff, and oppression, wherein unhap-
pily they were brought up, to law and justice, they
have broken loose, and have associated to them a
number of the young brood of that clan who are
now risen up, and with them they go in troops and
companies athwart the country, armed with bows,
darlochs, hacbuts, pistolets, and other armour, com-
mitting a number of insolencies upon his majesty's
good subjects in all parts where they may be mas-
ters, and they do what in them lies to stir up the
whole clan to a new rebellion, highly to his ma*
jesty's offence, and the contempt and hurt of his
good subjects."
His majesty, in fact, as represented by his own

THE CLAN GREGOR. 33

council, appears to have been both perplexed and
infuriated into a fit of impotent railing, since, in
the midst of some laudations on his own great cle-
mency, we find him thus crying out in the minutes
of the council: "Forasmuch as the king's ma-
jesty having tane great pains and travails, and be-
stowed great charges and expenses for suppressing
of the insolencies of the lawless limmers of the clan,
whilk. formerly was called Clan Gregor, and for
reducing of them to obedience; and his majesty, in
4 his just wrath and indignation against the whole
race, having abolished the name thereof as most
infamous, and not worthy to be heard of in a
country subject to a prince, with majesty, power, and
force to execute vengeance upon such wretched and
miserable caitiffs as dare presume to lift their heads
and offend against his majesty and his laws," &c.

In the year 1630 the records of the council show
that they have come back to the same subject — as
far as ever from their proposed end, but not less
indignant and vituperative. After a long head-roll
of the chief offenders, who are as usual denominated
lawless limmers, it is stated, that they have united
themselves with other broken clans to renew their
accustomed and wicked trade of theft and stou-
thrief, wherein* they are tauntingly informed that
numbers of their wicked and miserable predecessors

VOL. I. D

34 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

ended their lives. They go, as of old, in troops
athwart the heads of Menteith and Stratherne,
where they not only commit private depredations
but open ravages, threatening with fire and sword
such of his majesty's good subjects against whom
they have quarrel, and who profess to oppose and
resist their- thievish and lawless doings. " Where-
through," continue the bewildered privy council,
" the peace of the country is far disturbed, and his
majesty's good subjects distressed in their persons
and goods, to the great contempt of law and jus-
tice, and disgrace of his majesty's authority and
government. And whereas it is a great discredit
to the country that such an infamous bike (or hive)
of lawless limmers shall be suffered to break loose,
as if his majesty's arm of justice were not able to
overtake; therefore/' &c. And- so follow new
authorities to the enemies of the clan " to besiege
their strengths with fire and all kinds of warlike
engines, that justice may be ministrate unto them."
The besiegers and pursuers are affectionately desired
to set themselves steadily to the work before thein,
without heeding collateral consequences; and what-
ever mutilation, slaughter, " or other inconve-
nience," to any of the king's lieges may occur in the
conflict, the inflicter is to suffer no pain or penalty
for it, but to be held as having done good service.

THE CLAN GREGOB. 35

And so the denunciation proceeds in terms seeking
to be new, but bearing so tedious a uniformity of
character to those previously adopted, that the
council had evidently exhausted every form of wrath
and vengeance in its previous efforts, and was all
vainly grasping at something new.*

The council having exhausted all its efforts in
vain, it was probably considered a happy thought to
try what parliament could do, as the rector's au-
thority is resorted to when the birches of the ushers
have failed to infuse a salutary awe. In 1633 was
passed an "act anent the Clan Gregor." This
act does little more than ratify the denunciations of
the council in the same indignant phraseology; and
we need not dwell on its contents, as they can be
seen at length in the Scottish statute-book. It im-
posed penalties on clergymen christening infants
with the name of Gregor, and on notaries employ-
ing the surname of the clan in legal documents.

A provision was made for the clan coming one
by one to the privy council, and finding security for
their good behaviour. But the sorners and limmers
believed in a punic faith which they had no Roman
virtue to sacrifice themselves to ; and they prudently
declined to go below the passes. Next year we find

* Becorda of the Privy Council of Scotland, MS., General
Begiater House.

D2

36 PBOCEEDINGS AGAINST

the privy council at work again as hopelessly as ever.
An excellent and reasonable act has, they assure the
country, been passed in his majesty's last parliament,
permitting the limmers to make their appearance
before the lords of his majesty's privy council, and
there find security for their good behaviour; " and
though it was expected," continue my lords, with
much simplicity, " thatUhose of the Clan Gregor
should have embraced his majesty's favour shown
unto them, and should have given their compearance
before his majesty's council to the effect foresaid,
yet few or none of them has compeared, but has
neglected their duty and obedience in that point."
The council profess . themselves " loath to take that
advantage of the said clan which their contempt and
disobedience deserves;" and so they give the limmers
another opportunity of coming to Edinburgh and
finding security, before relaunching against them
those efforts of vengeance which previous experience
had shown to be so hopeless.

At this time the clan possessed a brigand leader,
who obtained more contemporary fame than even
his celebrated successor, Rob Roy. His name was
Patrick Macgregor ; but he was known to fame by
the descriptive epithet of Grilroy, or Gilderoy, the
^ed Gilly or youth. He has been celebrated both
prose and rhyme. A well-known and long

d THE CLAN GREGOR. 37

popular ballad, which laments the untimely fate of
so many virtues and accomplishments, commences
thus:

" Gilderoy was a bonny boy, .

Had roses till his shoon;
His stockings were of silken soy,

Wi' garters hanging down.
It was, I ween, a comely sight

To see sae trim a boy;
He was my joy and heart's delight,

My handsome Gilderoy.

" sic twa charming een he had,

Breath sweet as any rose;
He never wore a Hieland plaid,

But costly, silken clothes.
He gained the love of ladies gay,

Nane e'er to him was coy.
Ah! wae is me, I mourn the day

For my dear Gilderoy."

This is a somewhat Arcadian sketch of the red-
haired Highland riever; but truth glimmers through
the poetry of the widow's lament as it proceeds, and
develops that propensity to convert tuum into meum,

which was at the root of all the woes of the Mac-
gregors:

" My Gilderoy, baith far and near,

Was feared in every town,
And bauldly bore away the gear

Of many a Lowland loon.
For man to man durst meet him nane,

He was so brave a boy;
At length wi' numbers he was tane,

My winsome Gilderoy.

38 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

" Wae worth the louns that mode the laws,

To hang a man for gear,
To reave of life for sic a cause

As stealing horse or mare!
Had not their laws been made sae strick,

I ne'er had lost my joy;
Wi' sorrow ne'er had wat my cheek

For my dear Gilderoy."

We shall now turn to a portrait of this hero in
harsher, but rather more truthful colours. The
reader may, or may not, be acquainted with a folio
volume, illustrated with a few grotesque engravings
imitated from Hogarth, and called, " History of
the most famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Rob-
bers, and Pirates, with their Trials." The funda-
mental element of the book is the history of con-
temporary crimes and criminals while highway
robbery was at its climax ; and many a time have
these coarse but truthfully-impressive narratives of
crime, prolonged the lingering of the absorbed group
around the winter hearth, and disturbed their sleep
by fashioning the casual midnight sounds into the
creaking of timber beneath a furtive tread, or the
stifled groan of some victim of the knife. But he
who desires to consult this emporium of crime,
must find the earliest and rarest edition,* since, in
those of later date, many of the most grotesque and
strange narratives have been, for some -purpose or
* London, 1784.

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 39

other, suppressed. Among these there are a few
which, like the memoir of Gilderoy, relate to a
time and country which were not those of the
author, and to social conditions which he neither
knew nor could accurately imagine. Though in
these the falsehood largely predominates over the
truth, yet the very grotesqueness of their anachron-
isms, like pictures of Garrick acting Macbeth in a
laced waistcoat and powdered wig, make them
curious and amusing. Some of these grotesque
sketches relate to Scotsmen, and among them is a
memoir of the illustrious Gilderoy*

The mountain freebooter is converted into an
English highwayman. Tradition marked him as
a man of family, and therefore Johnson makes him
pass into his career of vice through the same pro-
cess which might bring a well-connected young
miscreant of Yorkshire or Cheshire to the highway.
Thus — " His father died just as he was of age,
when, leaving him an estate of 80 marks a year, he

* Among Captain Johnson's Scottish ruffians, there is a cer-
tain Sawney Beane, an antbropophagist, the patriarch of an ex-
tensive clan or progeny—for they were all descended from him-
self—who lived in a vast cavern, and fed on human flesh. The
memoir is accompanied with aa appropriate plate, representing
Sawney at the month of his cavern, looking abroad for victims,
while a female descendant conveys two human legs within the
cavern to be put in pickle. The gang, it appears, were not
discovered until the extent of their appetites produced a sen-
sible effect on the national census.

40 PBOCEEDING8 AGAINST

thought himself fully capable to the management of
it without the advice of his friends, by which
means he, in short, managed it all away, and ran
through it in about a year and a half; upon which
he soon became very needy, and a fit subject to be
moulded into any shape which had an appearance
of profit. Having thus, by his irregularities, re-
duced himself to a very poor condition, he was very
burdensome to his mother, who often supplied him
with money out of her jointure, which he always
quickly consumed; but she, perceiving that no
good admonitions would reclaim his extravagancy,
withheld her hand, and would not answer his ex-
pectation ; whereupon, lying at her house one night,
he arose, entered his mother's bed-chamber! cut her
throat with a razor, and then plundered and burnt
the house lo the ground."

His next adventure is of a totally different cha-
racter, and has probably been borrowed from some
French novel or adventures of Cartouche. We
are to suppose him dressed like a courtier, and
attending in the royal church of St. Denis, while
Richelieu performs high mass in presence of the
king. Gilderoy, having a design on the cardinal's
purse, winks to his majesty to secure his connivance
at a good joke, while the purse is abstracted. The
king witnesses the operation with great satisfaction,

THE CLAN GREGOB. 41

and does his part by stepping up to the cardinal,
and desiring to be accommodated with a trifling
sum of money, when the loss is, of course, dis-
covered. " The king, knowing which way it went,
was more than ordinarily merry; until, being tired
with laughter, he was willing that the cardinal
might have again what was taken from him. The
king thought that he who took the money was an
honest gentleman, and of some account, as he kept
his countenance so well; but Gilderoy had more
wit than to come near them, for he acted not in
jest, but in good earnest. Then the cardinal turned
all the laughter against the king, who, using his
common oath, swore, by the faith of a gentleman,
it was the first time that ever a thief had made him
his companion. 1 '

The feats attributed by this authority to Gilderoy
in his own country are not less remarkable and
eccentric. He seems to have anticipated, in a
highly tragic form, the idea of that constable who,
according to Scott, placed his boy in the unoccu-
pied stocks at the gate of Glammis Castle for the
sake of uniformity, because there was a vagrant
stocked on the other side of the gate. Three of
his followers had been condemned, executed, and
hung in chains. According to a common practice,
the scaffold from which the rotting bodies were

43 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

suspended was circular and wheel-shaped, and was
fixed on the top of a strong beam, passing into the
central socket like an axle. In Captain Johnson's
words, it " was made like a turnstile, only the
beams on each end of which is nailed a strong iron
hook to which the rope is fastened, has no motion."
Now the gallows was adapted for four; but there
were only three hanging on it, and the general
effect of the tragic exhibition was unsymmetrical.
The judge who had condemned the three to death
being on his way towards Aberdeen, where he was
to hold a circuit court of justiciary, was attacked
and taken captive by the outlaw leader. Deli-
berating on the proper destination of so precious a
spoil, a savage impulse of practical sarcasm prompted
him to complete the quadrangular uniformity of
the gallows by there hanging the judge, and he
did so accordingly. The mangled use of Scottish
language, phraseology, and names, shows that
Johnson's history is by no means entirely imaginary.
It must have been founded on native authority,
and is probably a decoration of the narrative con-
tained in some contemporary chap book. He
concludes thus his account of the comic tragedy: —
" 'Now/ said Gilderoy to the judge, i by my soul,
mon, as this unlucky structure, erected to break
people's craigs, is not uniform without a fourth

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 43

person taking his lodging here too, I must e'en
hang you upon the vacant beam.' Accordingly
he was as good as his word; and for fear the go-
vernment should not know who was the hangman,
he sent a letter to the ministers of state to acquaint
them with his proceedings. This insolence caused
the legislature to contrive ways and means to sup-
press the audaciousness of Gilderoy and his com-
panions, who were dreaded far and near ; and
among them, one Jennet, a lawyer, promoted the
law for hanging a highwayman first and judging
him afterwards ; which law being approved of, it
received the sanction of the government without
any contradiction, and was often put in force
against gentlemen of the road."

The invention of " one Jennet, a lawyer," is a
ridiculous enough gloss on the term Jeddert justice,
or the practice of the citizens of Jedburgh, who
had the reputation of rigorously and impartially
investigating the charges against an enemy from the
English border after they had put him to death.

But some passages in Captain Johnson's history
are more veritable and life-like. Thus — " In a
little time his name became so dreaded through the
whole country, that travellers were afraid to pass
the roads without a great many in company. And

44 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

when money was short with him, he would enter
into Atholl, Lochaber, Angus, Mar, Buquhan, Mur-
ray, Sutherland, and other shires in the north of
Scotland, and drive away the people's cattle, unless
they paid him contribution, which they did quar-
terly, and had his protection."

One feat attributed by the captain to his hero is
so remarkable, that it must be conveyed in his own
words:

" When Oliver Cromwell embarked at Don-
nachadee, in the north of Ireland, and landed at
Portpatrick in Scotland, the news thereof came to
Gilderoy, who was then lurking in the shire of
Galloway; accordingly, he met him on the road
towards Glasgow. Cromwell having only two ser-
vants with him, he commanded him to stand and
deliver; but the former, thinking three to one was
odds, refused to obey. They then came to an en-
gagement, and several pistols were discharged on
both sides for nearly a quarter of an hour, when
the bold robber pretended to yield his antagonists
the day, by running as fast as he could from them.
They pursued him very closely for near half an
hour; and then, suddenly turning upon them, the
first mischief he did was shooting Oliver's horse,
which, falling on its side as soon as wounded,

THE CLAN GRBGOR. 45

broke the Protector's leg. As for his servants, he
shot one of them through the head, and the other
begging quarter, it was granted. But Oliver being
disabled, he had the civility to put him on an
ass, and, tying his legs under his belly, sent them
both to seek their fortunes."

The captain proves nothing by this narrative
but his 'acquaintance with the legend of the Horatii
and his Royalist predilections, which had induced
him to place old Noll in a ludicrous position. If
the story could command a moment's credit, it
would immediately be contradicted by dates, since,
in the succinct words of old Spalding's Chronicle,
u Gilderoy, with five other limmers, were taken,
and all hanged to the death," on the 29th. of July,
] 638 — a time when Cromwell, an embarrassed young
country gentleman, was more likely to be found
attempting to emigrate to America, than returning
with bloody laurels from Ireland.

Gilderoy commanded a large and formidable
band. Their operations were not confined to the
Lenox and other cultivated straths immediately
adjoining the country of the Macgregors, but had
a range of some hundreds of miles along the coun-
try which had the misfortune to border on the
Grampian mountains. Wherever there was negli-
gent watching of the cattle, or disputes and dis-

46 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

turbances, the freebooter would pounce on the de-
voted spot and relieve it of its animal inhabitants.
Several of his gang were taken and executed before
he could be caught. "Thir loons," says Spald-
ing, " were taken by the Stewarts of Atholl, by
persuasion and advice of the Lairds of Craigievar
and Corse, whereof there were seven hanged alto-
gether at the Cross of Edinburgh, and their heads
set up in exemplary places. The eighth man got
his life, because it was confessed he was drawn to
this service against his will. Gilderoy seeing this
— his men taken and hanged — went and burnt up
some of the Stewarts' houses in Atholl, in recom-
pense of this injury."*

The fortune of apprehending the leader fell to
the old enemy of his tribe, Argyle. On the 7th of
June, 1636, the privy council find that he, " out of
zeal and affection for his majesty's service and peace of
the country, has carefully bestirred himself, and now
in end successively taken the arch-rebel Patrick Mao
gregor, alias Gilroy, with some of his accomplices,
by whom his majesty's good subjects in the High-
lands and north parts of this kingdom has been
this long time bygone heavily infested in their
persons and goods." It is found that he "has be-
haved himself »as a generous and loyal subject, and
* Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland; L, 69.

THE CLAN GREGOR. 47

that he has done good, real, and acceptable service
to his majesty and the state."

The charge against Gilderoy very much resem-
bles those which we have already seen against his
predecessors. Plunder is at the root of all, and
bloodshed follows as an accidental condition of the
accomplishment of the main object. After so much
royal and official exultation at the capture of the
rebel and traitor, the indictment, commencing with
the charge of " usurpation of our sovereign lord's
power and authority," sets forth particulars which
might be held to fall short both of the solemnity
and the atrocity of the general charge. Thus one
of the specific accusations in the indictment is —
" Item, for art and part of the theftuous stealing of
four hens, about Lambmass, 1635, pertaining to the
goodman of Colquharnie." It was probably dif-
* ficult to find evidence of the specific acts of outrage,
and necessary not to lose sight of any that could be
proved, however insignificant. After an enumera-
tion of depredations, rather more important in their
character, and embracing a tedious list of cows,
oxen, horses, furniture, goods and gear, insight
plenishing, rents and evidents, &c., with casual acts
of kidnapping and slaughter, there is a general
charge " for corning with your accomplices these
three years bygone through the whole bounds of

48 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

Strathspey, Bracmar, Cromar, and countries there**
about, oppressing the whole common and poor
people, violently taking and riveing from them of*
their meat, drink, and all provision, with their
whole goods, &c, and for common theft and reset
of theft." The record bears that Gilderoy and
his band were convicted on their own confession,
which, as they could not speak in any language
intelligible to the court, was interpreted by Stewart
of Ardvoirlich. Confession is a strange and unac-
countable act for such men spontaneously to commit
in the full assurance of the gallows, and one cannot
help suspecting that there must have been foul play in
this matter. Along with a coadjutor named Forbes,
Gilderoy enjoyed the honour of the gibbet on which
they were hanged being raised " one great degree
higher nor the gibbet whereon the rest shall suffer."
His head and hand were affixed on the east or"
nether-bow port of Edinburgh.

Thirty years now elapse ere another distinguished
leader of the clan gives work to the hangman. On
the 25th of March, 1667, Patrick Roy Macgregor
was brought to trial for theft, sorning, wilful fire-
raising, robbery, and murder. He was at the head
of a band of desperate banditti, numbering about
forty. His latest exploit was an attack almost of
the nature of a siege, made on the small town of

THE QLAN GEEGOE. 49

Keith, in Banflshire, at which he was wounded and
made prisoner. The deed for which he was tried
was a midnight attack on the house of Bellkirrie,
and the murder of its inmates, Lion of Muiress
and his son. The elder victim appears to have
secured the vengeance of the banditti, by having
brought some of them to punishment for sorning on
his lands. His own house was perhaps not so ac-
cessible as Bellkirrie; for the news of his visit to his
son there, seems to have put the band of freebooters
in immediate motion. The indictment charges
the murderers with having accepted a capitulation
from the victims, with a condition that their lives
were to be spared. Patrick Roy did not confess
the deed, like his predecessor of greater notoriety;
and the records therefore contain the substance of
the evidence against him.

James Urquhart, of Camishum, the principal
witness, stated that, while Muiress was with his son,
hearing that the freebooters were in the neighbour-
hood, they took care to house the horses and cattle.
The whole household had gone to bed when Roy
commenced his attack. The building was low, and
thatched; and when the besiegers had collected a
quantity of straw from the barn-yard, and " built
it," as the witness describes, round the house, the
inmates were first awakened to a sense of their

VOL. I. « B

50 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

danger by a circle of stifling flames, from which
there was no escape, save into the hands of their
enemies, surrounding the house to the number of
eighteen or twenty. This witness spoke distinctly
to the stipulation on which the inmates yielded.
" And after Muiress and those that were with him
had come out of the house, they (the freebooters)
did seize upon and take away the horses to the
number of Ave or six, and their arms — and that
Roy took and did wear Muiress's own buff coat and
his carbine — -that they did carry away with them
Muiress and his son, and those that were with him,
on Muiress's own horses — and that Boy, and Drum-
mond, and others, his accomplices, did ride before
and behind them upon the said hor9es. ,, The witness
further said, that he and his companions were re-
moved as prisoners, but " were dismissed the same
day, being, before they were dismissed, made to swear
upon their dirks that they should not tell where
Muiress was, or what should become of him." 'The
next witness, Cruikshank, confirmed this statement;
and in continuation, narrated, " That Muiress and
his son were carried up and down, from place to
place, through the mountains, from Sunday morn-
ing, that they were taken — being the 8th — until
Wednesday before night that they were murdered,
without giving them meat or drink. That they and

THE CLAN GREGOR. 51

Drummond did, about twelve o'clock the day they
were taken, leave the prisoners with their complices,
and did go away to Ardkingeline on Muiress's
horses upon the said day, being Sunday, and did
not return until Wednesday thereafter — the day
that Muiress and his son were murdered — and that
after they had returned, which was about two
o'clock, Muiress, having desired Thomas Gordon,
who, having been sent to Muiress with a letter from
Baldovine, and spoke Erse, to see what they intended
to do with them, he heard the same Thomas answer
him by order of Roy, in English, that he should
make him, before his God, very quickly— or such
like words." The witness said that they threw a
dirk at himself, and threatened him with death.
He was removed at the time of the committing of the
murder, and the person in charge of him professed,
that he had received instructions to put him to death
also, but was induced to spare him. His testimony,
like that of the other witnesses, terminated with the
statement that the prisoners enjoyed in the country
the character of being " broken men, thieves, and
sorners." None of the witnesses saw the actual
perpetration of the murder; but the bodies were
found pierced with dirk wounds. The Macgregors
were found guilty. Their sentence was, that they
were to be hanged, " the right hand being previously
e2

52 PBOCEBPINGS AGAINST

cut off, and their bodies to be hung in chains on
the gallow-lee."*

Robert Macgregor, from the epithet Roy, must
have been red-haired — a prevailing characteristic of
the chief men of the Clan Gregor — whence some
ethnologists would infer for them a Scandinavian
origin. One of the judges of the court before which
he was tried, Lord Pitmedden, has left this brief
notice of the appearance and demeanour of the High-
land brigand. " He was of a low stature, but strong
made ; had a fierce countenance — a brisk, hawke-like
eye. He bore the torture of the boots with great con-
stancy; and was undaunted at his execution, though
mangled by the executioner in cutting off his hand;
for which the executioner was turned out."f

The political revolutions of the country had, in
the mean time, xmriously affected the nominal po-
sition of the clan. Their turbulence, under the
rule of the Presbyterians and of Cromwell, was
interpreted as loyalty to the house of Stewart, and,
in the year after the Restoration, the acts against
them were repealed. In 1691 they were reimposed
by the revolution parliament. The change but little
affected the position of the Highland freebooters,

* Becords of the Hight Court of Justiciary, MS. General
Begister House.

f Abstract from the Books of Adjournal, MS. Ad. Lib., p.
504.

THE CLAN GREGOB. 53

against whom there was always a vital enmity,
which required no orders in council or acts of parlia-
ment to keep it alive. But it seriously affected those
who, in the interval, had established themselves in
peaceful pursuits among the Lowland towns. Thus,
in 1695, a certain Evan Macgregor, describing him-
self as a merchant, residing in Leith, and master of
a manufactory in Edinburgh, applied to parlia-
ment, stating that he had borne the name during
the interval of toleration in the pursuit of his busi-
ness, and representing that — " It is evident, on the
one hand, his continuing the said name can be no
prejudice to any design, ever was, or now may be,
for the general peace, and in order to the greater
quiet of the. Highlands; and, on the other hand,
that his discontinuing of the samecannot but bring
a great confusion upon his trade and all his affairs,
which may in effect tend to his utter ruin." He
states that the act has affected him in mercantile
transactions, by affording an excuse to those who
were indisposed to honour their bills or pay their
accounts, u which he humbly supposes was never
thereby intended." Parliament solemnly adjudged
that the act " shall not be extended to the petitioner
residing in Leith, and living in the Lowlands; and
hereby allows him to use the name of Macgregor,

54 PBOCBJSDINGS AGAINST

but refuses that privilege or exemption to his chil-
dren or posterity ; and ordains the petitioner to give
in a condescendence this night of what surname
he will give his children, to the efiect the same may
be marked in the minutes of parliament."

We now come, in chronological order, to a name
which might be expected richly to continue our
record of iniquities — that of Rob Roy, the hero of
Scott's magnificent romance; but, singularly enough,
little can be legitimately said of him in a narrative
drawing its materials from criminal trials. But for
the fortuitous illumination of fictitious literature, he
would, indeed, have been just now no more distin-
guishable in a list of the half-freebooter,, half-drover
scamps with whom he was associated, than Macbeth,
but for a similar illumination, would, have been dis-
tinguished from a dreary catalogue of half-mythical
monarchs with uncertain names. Rob Roy, in fact,
was not so much a criminal as a scamp; and his mis-
deeds, instead of the burnings,, sieges, and murders
which blacken the memory of his predecessors, are
associated with dishonoured bills, fraudulent bank-
ruptcy, and swindled cattle-dealers, Scott him-
self* in feet, had not discovered the true, character
of his hero until after he had written the romance;
and his evident mortification, as, in the introduction

THE CLAN GREGOR. 55

ta.the later editions he brings out each act of petty
rascality, is a little ludicrous. Yielding to the
law which proscribed the name of Macgregor,
Bob adopted that of Campbell, in which he figures
in some " leading ' cases," which show lawyers
how to give check-mate to subtle debtors en-
deavouring to evade the pursuit of their creditors.
Thus, of date the 16th of January, 1713, Sir Hew
Dalrymple commences the report of a case with the
following far from heroic narrative:

" Robert Campbell, alias Rob Roy, draws a bill
upon Graham of Gorthie, payable to the drawer,
which Gorthie accepted; and the drawer having
indorsed that bill to Hamilton of Bardowie, about
the same time the indorser broke and fled." Gorthie
thereupon raised certain legal proceedings, in which
there was the following history of facts: — "That
the cause of the bill was a contract of the same date,
whereby Rob Roy was obliged to deliver to Gorthie
a certain number of Highland cattle: that he had
made the like bargains with a great many gentle-
men who had trusted him with money, in contem-
plation of receiving the value in cattle; and having
thus amassed a great sum of money in his hands, he
did most fraudulently withdraw, and fled without
performing anything on his part, and thereby be-

56 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

came unquestionably a notour and fraudulent bank-
rupt."*

It is probable that bankruptcy, so dreadful to the
members of our artificial system, as it is termed,
brought very little change to Rob's condition; " for
in the principles of things he sought his moral
creed," and it is then that we can best picture him
saying, according to Wordsworth,

" What need of books?

Burn all the statutes and their shelves;
They stir us up against our kind,

And worse— against ourselves.
The creatures see of flood and field,

And those that travel in the wind.
With them no strife can last — they live

In peace — and peace of mind.
For why? — because the good old rule

Sufficeth them — the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can."

Rob was ostensibly a dealer in cattle, and he
cared not very particularly how he came by them.
He often exacted that celebrated tribute called
black mail, for the protection of the fruits of Low-
land industry; and as often, by the suspicions
raised against him, rendered it prudent to pay
tribute to other protectors. The arrangements for
the payment of black mail for some years after his

* In the Introduction to " Rod Roy," there is a copy of an
advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant as to these transactions.

THE CLAN GREGOB. 57

death, show that the staple occupation of the Clan
Gregor — cattle-lifting, as it was called — had not
become obsolete; and, at the same time, they
indicate that the determined and systematic efforts
of the sufferers were drawing close to the accom-
plishment of its suppression. In the old statistical
account of Scotland is printed perhaps the latest
bond for payment of black mail known to be ex-
tant. It is dated in 1741, and relates to the lands
immediately adjoining the Macgregor country. It
is a systematic contract, in which Graham of Glen-
gyle, the nephew of Rob Roy, agrees, for a* mail of
four per cent, on the valued rent, to protect the " gen-
tlemen, heritors, and tenants within the shires of
Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton," who subscribe it
He engages to hold those who agree to pay tribute
to him " skaithless of any loss by the away-taking of
their cattle, horses, or sheep;" and the obligation on
both sides is so arranged, that the payment of the
tribute to Graham, and his compensation for any
cattle proved to be stolen, could be made good in the
courts of law. Such remedies, however, were only
partial. The thieves having behind them virtually
infinite resources, in the vast mountain region to
the north and west, established a judicious system
of exchanges. If Glengyle, with a posse comitatus
from the Lenox or the Garse of Stirling, pene-

5ft PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

touted into the fastnesses of the Macgiegor country,
they might see cattle, and might know them to
have been "lifted," as surely as the detective po-
Hceman knows the gold-capped and jewelled watch
found in the tramp-house to hare been stolen; but
no man could identify his own cattle. Those
swept from the Lowlands of Lanark or Stirling
were far off among die mountains beyond the
Muir of Bannoch ; those lifted in Aberdeen or
Moray were transferred to the Macgregor country.
The " sorners and limmers" had often great gather-
ings for the exchange of stolen cattle. They met
armed, and, amid libations of whisky, sometimes
transacted a little political business for the exiled
house of Stewart, or rather against the existing
government, for their interest lay more in pulling
down than setting up.

In the year 1744, Evan Macpherson of Cluny,
a chief of great influence, undertook what was
called " a watch," " for the security of several
counties in the north of Scotland front thefts and
depredations." The function was pressed upon
him at a meeting of the landowners most sorely
pillaged; and, though they agreed to pay him a
certain tribute, it was not the accomplice's bribe,
like the old black mail, but a contribution towards
the heavy expense of supporting a Highland police.

THB CLAS GBEGOR. 00

So completely had a large portion of the High-
landers been accustomed to live on the fruit of
other people's industry, that the strict operation of
Chury's watch is said to have involved them in
dreadful misery.*

Still all these remedies were partial and ineffec-
tive, and the practice did not come to an end until
the constitutional reformation following the rebel-
lion of 1745 swept before it the predatory propensi-
ties, as well as the warlike habits of the High-
landers.

But, returning to the Clan Gregor and their
achievements, as recorded in the proceedings of
the penal tribunals. If all that can be said of Bob
Boy himself may be called an unexpected blank,
we shall find the ancient spirit reviving in his sons,
who aimed at nobler predatory game than cattle.
One of these sons is named in the record " James
Macgregor, alias Drummond, alias More/' and to
make his identification more complete, he is de-
scribed as an outlaw, for taking to flight when
charged with the murder of John Maclaren of
Wester Inernenty. The indictment, which is the
only statement we possess of the nature of this
crime, attributes the motive to a belief among the

* Watch undertaken by Macpherson of Cluny, Miscellany
of Spalding Club.

60 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

Macgregors that Maclaren was about to take a lease
of a farm called Kirktoun, occupied by the mother
of the young Macgregor, Rob Roy's widow — the
heroine of the novel. The assassination, as de-
scribed in the same document, was performed in
the simplest of manners. " When the said John
Maclaren was holding his own plough, with which
he was labouring the ground, you, with a loaded
gun in your hand, came behind his back, and
cruelly and barbarously discharged the gun upon
him, whereby he was wounded in the thigh, or
some other part of his body, of which wound or
wounds so given he died in a few hours thereafter
that same day."

In the proceedings on which we shall enter more
at length, this James Drummond was associated
with a brother, called Robert Macgregor, alias
Campbell, alias Drummond.

In the old mansion-house of Edinbellie, within a
few miles of the pass of Aberfoyle, there lived in the
winter of 1750 a young heiress named Jane Key.
Though not nineteen years old she had been nearly
two months a widow, and had returned on her
husband's death to the shelter of her mother's roof.
On the night of the 8th of December, when the
family circle were assembled, they were alarmed by
such sounds as used of old to announce the forays

THE CLAN GBEGOR. 61

which the law had recently been strong enough to
put down. The doors were burst open, and several
armed* Highlanders, with Rob Roy's sons at their
head,* broke in upon the household. The young
widow was naturally the first to flee for safety, and
had time to hide herself in one of the many recesses
of the old mansion ere the ruffians reached the
sitting-room. Finding her gone, they seized her
mother, and, by threatening " to murder every per-
son in the family, or to burn the house and every
person in it alive, unless the said Jane Key should
be produced," discovered the poor girl's hiding-
place. She was told that an ardent affection for her
person had prompted this outrage, and that Robert
Macgregor had adopted these unusual means for
overcoming the difficulties he might meet in aspir-
ing to her hand; and she was told this in a manner
to show that she was the spoil of the conqueror's
sword, and must comply. " And upon her desir-
ing," says the indictment, in its technical language,
" to be allowed till next morning, or for some few
hours, to deliberate on the answer she was to give
to so unexpected and sudden a proposal as a mar-
riage betwixt her, then not two months a widow,
and a man with whom she had no manner of
acquaintance. After some further discourse, or
expostulation, you, the said James Macgregor, or
one or other of your accomplices, laid violent hands

64 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

upon die said Jane Key, within her own dwelling-
house as aforesaid, and in a most barbarous, cruel,
and most unbecoming and indecent manner, dragged
her to the door, while she was making all the
resistance in her power, and crying out for help
and assistance, and uttering many bitter lamenta-
tions; and after she was thus dragged to the door,
you and one or other of your accomplices did, with
force and violence, most barbarously and inhumanly
lay the said Jane Key upon a horse, placing her
body across the horse, upon the torr or forepart of
the saddle, after having tied her arms with ropes.
And during all the time these barbarous and horrid
outrages were acting, you and your accomplices, or
one or other of you, did threaten, with execrable
oaths, immediately to murder every person who
should offer to give the said Jane Key the least
assistance." f

She was thus conveyed to Bowerdennan on Loch
Lomond. The tourist who sojourns for a short time at
this lovely spot, before crossing the lake, or attempt-
ing the ascent of Ben Lomond, will scarcely, in the
midst of so much tranquillity and beauty, be able
to realise the horrible position of poor Jane Key in
the hands of the hereditary enemies of her house
and of her race ; the ruthless, lawless tribe, whose
savage ferocity had been the theme of all household
• Justiciary Papers, Advocates' Library.

THE CLAN GREGOR. 68

honors, from the nursery-tale inflicted on the
rebellious infant, to the sanguinary legend which
roused the interest of the sleepy circle round the
smouldering tur£ It was among the families ^nd
communities, who were nearest to their mountain
homes, that the Highland outlaws had established
the greatest dread and horror; and by the heiress's
family their neighbours above the pass had, for
generation after generation, been viewed in the
same light as the Red Indian was by the Canadian
settler. And it was among these men that she
bow found herself, as helpless and as far removed
from succour as if the law had not recently pro-
fessed to assert its supremacy. But it was not
their object to do her any further injury than
what was necessary to give them the command over
her estate. To this end it was essential that the
possession of her person should be sanctified by the
rites of matrimony — the more solemnly performed
the better. Warrants were issued against the ma-
rauders, and a body of troops was sent to aid the
civil power; but the rufiians conveyed their prise
from place to place among the hereditary fastnesses
of the Macgregor country, and before they could
be interrupted, a clergyman, acting under their
orders, had celebrated her marriage with Robert
Macgregor in due form.

Thus baffled, the relations of the heiress resolved

64 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

to take up their position in the final object of
attack — the citadel as it were — and took measures
for placing her property under trust. The ruffians,
no doubt, believed that they would persuade her,
for the sake of worldly appearances, or of many of
those multitudinous influences which guide the
female heart to gentleness and self-sacrifice, silently
to justify this rough wooing; and, giving the chosen
brother, in the eye of the world, the place of her
lord and husband, thus enable him to obtain her
property. The court of session, on the applica-
tion of her relations, placed her property under
trust, with a view of applying the proceeds in re-
lieving the heiress from captivity and bringing the
kidnappers to justice. The result of this showed
how accurately the Macgregors' views had been
solved. It was now necessary that everything
should be braved to acquire for Robert the position
of the accepted husband of his victim, and the re-
moval of the property from their grasp drew one
of them out of that den from which the law and
the sword were alike unable to drive him.

Now occurred a circumstance which, in a re-
markable shape, shows the feebleness of the law a
century ago even in the capital of Scotland. Jane
Key — or as she was now called, Mrs. Drummond —
paid a visit to the metropolis. Her husband did
not accompany her; he might be seriously occupied

THE CLAN GREGOR. 05

with his extensive transactions in sheep and cattle.
The brother James, however, having less to do,
kindly attended his sister-in-law. While they were
thus apparently under the eye of the world, an ap-
plication was made to the court of session in proper
official form in the name of Jane Key, desiring that
her property might be restored, declaring that she
was the willing and affectionate wife of Robert
Macgregor, or Drummond, and that the forced
abduction was a little farce got up by herself, to
save appearances and avoid the impertinent ridicule
that might have persecuted her for yielding to a
passion matured within two months after her hus-
band's death. The court looked with supreme
suspicion on this document, as well they might.
Nor did it clear the case, that a letter was produced,
signed, but not written by Jane Key, and dated
twenty days before the abduction, in which she
invited Macgregor to come and seize her. It was
considered necessary to examine Jane Key as a wit-
ness for the crown in the proceedings preliminary
to a prosecution; and the record bears that " She
acknowledged that she had been with the persons
against whom the warrants had been granted on her
account; and that she was, upon the Monday after
she was taken away, married to the said Robert
Macgregor, alias Drummond, by one who signed
vol. i. p

66 PROCEEDINGS AGAIKST

his name Smith, and that she inclined to adhere to
the marriage*"

Among the deep narrow winds, and mountainous
edifices of the Old Town of Edinburgh, a Scots-
man's house was much more of a castle than an
Englishman's. The scanty police were allof an ex-
ternal, street-parading character; and men backed
by followers could isolate themselves both from au-
thority and observation, and conduct schemes of
domestic tyranny with impunity. Conscious of
such facilities, the court of session "sequestrated"
the heiress, and removing her from her alleged
husband, appointed for her a place of abode in the
house of an acquaintance, whose character and
social position might secure her from foul play.
The magistrates of Edinburgh were enjoined to
have a charge over her. Sentinels were placed round
the house; and it was an instruction to them, that,
without interrupting social intercourse with friendly
viators, they were not to permit any large number
of persons to enter the house. Such were the pre-
cautions deemed necessary for asserting the authority
of the law close to its very fountain-head. After
she had been for some time thus protected, she was
again examined, and she then bore testimony to the
whole tissue of violence and fraud of which she had
been the victim.

THE CLAN GBEGOB. 67

James Drummond was brought to trial. A long
legal dispute arose on the question whether the
•verdict of the jury was or was not a conviction.;
and in the mean time the criminal escaped, and the
poor victim died. Robert Macgregor, who acted
the part of the husband — but who is supposed to
have been the less guilty of the two brothers — was
afterwards caught, tried, convicted, and hanged.
-James lived in France with the Jacobite refugees,
awA other gentlemen who had found it convenient to
•quit their native shore. A small job in the way of his
business was put in his hands soon after hie retreat;
but he failed satisfactorily to accomplish it. Allan
Brec Stewart, of whom an account will be given
further on, had made his escape under suspicions
very dose to assurance that he had murdered
Oampbell of Glenure. It was of great moment to
-the government to get hold of Allan Brec — indeed,
in his absence, they found it necessary, as we shall
afterwards find, to hang another person, who pro-
bably might have been spared had Allan Brec been
apprehended. Drummond was employed to kidnap
him; but Allan Brec, having heard of the plot,
vowed that he would slay Drummond, if the rascal
came within his reach; and he was a man likely to
be as good as his word. Drummond, who lived
afterwards in abject poverty in France, stated that
F2

68 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

he was offered by Lord Holderness a lucrative ap-
pointment under government, but that he refused it
on principle. And there are not wanting Celtic
fanatics who, discarding all the rest of his vile
history, hold- him, upon this little morsel of his own
evidence in his own favour, to have been a noble-
hearted man of sensitive honour.

It is impossible to pass away from these sad annals
of fraud and violence without a brief glance at the
political moral taught by more than two hundred
years of hereditary war with the law. It may join,
with many other dark chapters in British history,
in teaching the true functions of a governing people,
towards races behind them in enlightenment, and
in the hereditary subjugation of the bad passions.
Nor are the lessons so taught absolutely useless at
this day for practical purposes. If we be now be-
yond the time when instruction of so tragic a cha-
racter is necessary to teach statesmen their duty
towards any portion of the United Kingdom, yet
this empire is daily coming more and more in con-
tact with wild tribes in distant lands, and is daily
requiring further instruction in the difficult art
of properly ruling them. In the history of the
Macgregors we see, on the one hand, a ferocious
race, in whom the predatory and sanguinary pas-
- *>ns are nourished from generation [to generation,

THE CLAN GREGOR. 69

acting after their kind; on the other, a government
which uses nothing but the sword, and, unless it
can carry that to the extent of extermination, ever
uses it in vain. The law is the avenger alone;
it is never the parent, the instructor, or the protec-
tor; and its vengeance ever reprovoked is never
satiated.

To judge in any comparative way of the merits
of the two parties, is a difficult ethical problem. To
maintain that the conduct of the government was
just, is out of the question. It is difficult to find
out the best means of punishing crime, but it is
easy to decide that there cannot be a worse than the
handing over of the offender to the irresponsible
vengeance of his enemy. On the other hand, it
would be somewhat more preposterous to follow
some Celtic apologists in the view that the Mac*
gregors were a pure and persecuted race, whose out-
rages were but the recalcitrations of high-minded
men against calculating oppression. They had plun-
dered their neighbours, and defied the government.
Governments commonly consist of men with human
passions, liable to be directed by the opinions and
prejudices of the time. If they are pricked, they
will bleed ; if they are tickled, they will laugh ; and if
they are wronged, will they not revenge? But the
fihort, sharp remedy of the sword has ever been too

70 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

readily resorted to to cut the knot, and sever the
entanglements which men find in dealings with
tribes less civilised than themselves. Thus the
barbarian has seen civilisation only in its terrors,
and has recoiled from it instead of courting it* To
be superior to angry impulses;, and treat with ab-
stract justice, and a view to their enlightenment
and improvement, tribes who themselves are full of
injustice and cruelty; is one of the latest and most
precious acquisitions* of a high civilisation;*

* How much of the spirit which animated the proceedings
against the Macgregors yet lingers in minds reared under the
shelter of British institutions, may be gathered from the follow-
ing remarks by an Australian author, incorporating a still more
expressive quotation from a writer on America. They are matfe
in reference to the indignant feelings expressed by the bushmen
on the occasion of some of their number haying been hanged
for killing natives :

"The. gun is the only law the black fears; the only powen
that deters him from murder and plunder; and the only avail-
able administrator of punishment for his offences."

" Those who denounce the squatter as a murderer and land*
robber, it has been well said in Kennedy's account of Texas,
( take no thought of the spirit that has impelled him onwards,
of the qualities he is constrained to display, and the sotialanra*
liorations of which he is the pioneer. He loves the wilderness
for the independence it confers— for the sovereignty which it
enables him to wield by dint of his personal energies?. The
forest is subject to his axe— its inhabitants to his gun.' By
daily toil, and at the risk of his life, he earns his bread, and
leads a life of conscious independence, where the grand oM
forests have stood for ages, and where the foot of the white man
never trod before. His life is one of continued labour, solitude,
rod, too often, warfare. He has an enemy untiring, and often?

THE- CLAN GBEGOK. 71

While the name of Macgregor remained under
legal proscription, those members of the clan who
desired to enjoy the privileges of peaceful civilisar
tion adopted the names of their maternal relations,
of changed the forbidden shape into Grregorson,
Macgregory, or Gregory. This last name recals
singular and interesting associations, realised in a
well-known anecdote, which represents the unplear
sanl surprise of the Aberdeen professor on haying
to receive Rob Eoy in his study as a distinguished
and influential kinaman. During a great part of the
tissue of hereditary crimes which we have just been
recording, this sapling of the family produced an
hereditary succession of genius, worth, and learn-

waiting long for his time— cunning, wary, and expert— fre-
quently displaying great courage, and, if he haa wrongs to
avenge, heedless on whom he wreaks his vengeance, so long as a
white man is the victim. Surely, then, the man who is the
pioneer of civilisation — who, going out into the wilderness,
spends his days in toil and danger, and his nights in dreariness
and solitude — who must send out his shepherd with a musket
on his shoulder, and sling his rifle at his side, when he rides
among his herds— who, making a lodgement in the bush,
causes 'the desert to rejoice, and blossom as the rose/ and
opens the way for the smiling villages, the good old British in-
stitutions, and the happy population which follow: surely this
man has not laboured in vain, but has deserved, at least, leni-
ency at our hands." — (Excursions and Adventures in New South
Wales, by John Henderson, i., 145.) The author, in explanation
of bis plea for leniency, says, that he does not mean to justify
"the causeless and indiscriminate slaughter which has often
taken place."

72 PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE CLAN GREGOR.

ing, such, in the steadiness and continuity of its
growth, as the world has not perhaps exemplified
in any other family; nor has its lustre yet departed.
It was not until the year 1775 that the oppro-
brium thrown on the name of Macgregor was
removed by an act of the British parliament. Since
that day, the once dreaded name has been sounded
with respect at drawing-room doors, in levees, in
bank parlours, anil on the hustings. It has fallen
to the lot of many eminent and worthy men. And
singularly enough, the only Highland clan which
strives to keep its ancient ties, and assemble to-
gether in a body, is that same Clan Gregor, to
whom it was prohibited to convene in numbers
exceeding four at a time.

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART

FOB

THE MUBDER OP CAMPBELL OF GLENURE.

The solitary crime of which we are now to give
a brief account, forms no inapt supplement to the
wild history of the Macgregors. It was the ex-
piring flame of that clan animosity which had been
fostered by the previous monarchs of Scotland,
as the divide et impera by which they sought to
govern.

After the suppression of the last Jacobite insur-
rection, Colin Campbell of Grlenure had been ap-
pointed factor for the government on certain for-
feited estates in the West Highlands, one of which
had belonged to Stewart of Ardshiel. In the
spring of 1751 he had removed Stewart from
the farm of Glen-Duror, and he made arrange-

74 TBIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

ments for a sweeping clearance of several other
tenants from the estate at the ensuing spring term.
These proceedings were resisted in the courts of
law; and the prisoner, James Stewart, had led the
proceedings with great activity and zeal; but the
legal resistance was in vain. All who are acquainted
with the state of the Highlands at that time will
know that these proceedings implied much more
than the mere conclusion of the connexion between
landlord and tenant. The farmer, or tacksman,
stood half way between the chief and the humblest
class of retainers. He was a gentleman, holding in
the patriarchal and military hierarchy the rank of
an officer. His rent did not depend on a question
of value, but was a tribute paid to the head of the
house. He was considered to have a sort of bene-
ficial property in his holding; and his removal from
it, in the old days, before the forfeitures, would
have been considered an affair rather for the clan,
and kindred than the law to undertake.

But the estates were now under the control of
the barons of exchequer, as managers for the
crown. They had. in view two objects — the ear
largement of the rents, and the suppression of the
Jacobite interest in the district. With both it was
considered that the continuance of Stewart and the
other tenants on Ardshiel was incompatible. It

TKEA1* OF JAMBS STEWABT. 75

appeared that to Stewart personally the political
question was the more serious of the two. It is
stated in the speeches made by the counsel for the
prosecution, that he discovered no resentment at
his own ejection; bat, procuring another farm in
the nesghbomihoodV continued to eaerciae his old in-
fluence over the tenants of ArdsMeL It was. when
steps were taken for tbeii removal, too, that his zeal
and activity were exhibited. In the words of the
accusing counsel, " So soon aa the factor, in the
farther execute** <af his instructions, began to take
the proper measures for removing, at Whit-Sunday,
1752, some of these tenants, he then took the alarm ;
that was to pluck up his interest by the root, and
entirely put an end to his influence. He therefore
made, the cause of the tenants his own, and every
method o£ opposition was tried to prevent their
removal."

Stewart at first coloured his. charges so highly,
and made out so strong a case of oppression against
Campbell, that he prevailed on the court to grant
s 44 siflb," as it was termed, for slopping the pro*-
ending- wntil they might he folly considered.
Elated by fade temporary triumph! Stewart had
assembled the tenants, and inspured them with
hopes that he would succeed in defeating the mar

76 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

chinations of their enemy. Campbell, the factor,
much annoyed by this interruption, went to Edin-
burgh, that he might personally bring the process
of removal or ejectment to the desired conclusion.
Stewart, at the same time, went thither to oppose
him. A bitter legal contest took place, in which,
as already stated, the factor was triumphant.

It is only from the state of our western neigh-
bours, among whom like disputes have produced
similar tragic results, that we can understand the
mingled elements of hatred — political, pecuniary,
and social — connected with such proceedings. That
they could not do otherwise than engender thoughts
of the darkest malice, was shown to be a common
understanding by a little incident in the trial.
The prisoner himself objected to the competency
of a witness against him, as one who must be im-
bued with malice, because, in former days, when
the management of the estates were in his own
hands, he had ejected this witness. To the ordi-
nary tenants, in fact, it was a deprivation of their
moderate competency. A few incidents in the
evidence show the severity of the change it would
create in their position. Some of them were to
remain in the farms, under the new tenants, in the
capacity of " bowmen," an expression which recals

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWABT. 77

other elements common to the Highland pea-
santry of that and the Irish of later days. The bow-
man, like the holder of a con-acre of land, worked
a small holding or croft, and paid his rent to the
tenant or middleman in a portion of the produce.*

On the 14th of May, the day before the term of
removal, Campbell, with the necessary officers for
executing the writs, proceeded by the old road
from Fortwilliam towards the too-memorable valley
of Glencoe.f They passed the ferry of Ballahu-
lish. Campbell then alighted from his horse, and
had a conversation with a neighbouring proprietor
whom he met there. While thus privately occupied
with his friend, he desired his servant, John Mac-
kenzie, to walk on before along with Mungo Camp-
bell, an Edinburgh writer. At an abrupt and rocky
part of the road this Mackenzie dropped a great-

* The name is supposed to be derived from the steelbow with
which the produce was weighed.

f The road is one of the wildest and most broken of the
ancient northern Highland paths. It rises high through rocky
ground, and often subjects the traveller to a severe contest with
the Highland storms. A melancholy instance of its dangerous
character occurred so lately as 1847. On the last day of
August in that year, two English tourists, having undertaken
the journey between Glencoe and Fortwilliam on foot, sat
down, overcome by fatigue. They were next day found dead
where they nad taken rest, coldness and exhaustion seducing
them into sleep from which they never wakened.

?6 TttlAL OF JAHfeS 8TBWA3ET.

coat belonging to Kennedy, a sheriff's officer, who
was following on foot When Campbell and hie
friend came to the place where the great-coat lay, a
halloo was raised to the others to come back for it.
Then Campbell parted with his friend and went on.
Kennedy, coming back for the coat, crossed Camp-
bell, who still went on. The Edinburgh writer was a
short distance in advance of Campbell, for the road
did not admit of two siding abreast. They had to
traverse thus a more than usually rough and broken
portion of the path, where they required to look to
their horses, and where they were overshadowed on
either side by a thicket called the Wood of Letter-
More. When Campbell reached this spot his com-
panions heard the discharge of a shot. On coming
up they found him lying in hiB blood, breath-
ing, but unable to utter more than a few incoherent
words, and close to death. Two bullets had entered,
one on either side of the backbone. The spot, it
was afterwards noticed, was one from which a per-
son standing on the bank might survey the road
and all that took place on it for some distance.
Nothing was seen of the person who fired the fatal
shot but the distant shadowy outline of a retreating
figure, who seemed to be dressed in a dark Highland
coat. About the actual perpetrator of the assassina-

TOIAL <OF JAMES BTEWABT. 79

tion there could, however, be no doubt. There was
% certain Alkn Brec Stewart, called in the indict-
»ent by the Oekic alias of Vic Ian Vic Allister.
He had been a soldier in a government regiment of
foot; but after the battle of Preston he deserted,
served with the insurgents, and, making his escape,
entered the French service. He went about openly
m the neighbourhood of Ballahulish and Glencoe,
and what his friends spoke of his temerity, he said
" he had made up his peace with General Churchill,
and had got his pass, which he bad in his pocket-
book;" but he always made some frivolous excuse
for dedbning to let the pass be seen. The most
peculiar part of his conduct, considering his dan-
gerous position, was the Tery noticeable costume in
which he swaggered about; it was called his French
dress, and was said to consist of a long blug coat, a
red waistcoat, and a feathered hat* He had been
heard, as he went idly about dissipating in change-
houses or small taverns, potent in his abuse of the
new factor and the whole race of Campbell, espe-
cially after he had been drinking whisky.

His expressions of enmity were all the better
noticed, that a change-house which he frequented,
probably because it lay nearest to Bis haunts, was
kept by a Campbell. To this man he had bluntly

80 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWABT.

said one dgy, in his cups, that he hated all of the
name of Campbell Then going away and drink-
ing elsewhere, he returned and told the publican,
that if he " had any respect for his friends, he
would tell them, if they offered to turn out the
possessors of Ardshiel's estate, he would make black
cocks of them before they entered into possession;"
an expression the significance of which will be suf-
ficiently apparent to sportsmen. " He said, twenty
times over, he would be fit-sides with Glenure
wherever he met him, and wanted nothing more
than to meet him at a convenient place." In
another change-house, where he had been drinking
all night, he showed a profusion of tipsy generosity
to a poor bowman, and wound up his attentions by
saying, " If he would fetch him the red fox's skin,
he would give him what was much better; to
which the said John Maccoll answered, that he was
no sportsman, and that he was much better skilled
in ploughing or delving." *

Allan Brec frequented the house of James Stewart.
It was shown that, on the night of the murder, he

* Trial of James Stewart, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1753, appendix,
p. 25. The references to the trial in the present notice are all
taken from the documents and evidence so published. They
fill a considerable volume.

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART. 81

had left his French clothes there. He put on a
short black Highland coat, as it is described, with
metal buttons, belonging to James Stewart, his
alleged accomplice: this dress corresponded with
the slight view which the Edinburgh writer ob-
tained of the retreating figure in the wood of Letter-
More. After the murder, his French clothes, as
they were called, were removed by his friends, and
concealed in a place where he was instructed how to
find them. Allan Brec took to flight. There would
have been nothing conclusive in this act taken
alone, as he was a deserter and a rebel, whence a cri-
minal investigation in his immediate neighbourhood
must have greatly disturbed his nerves.

He made his first appearance after the murder at
the house of Macdonald of Grlencoe, the very place
where a romance writer would, by the force of
destiny, send a murderer steeped in recent blood.
Nor was the time unsuitable for such a visit — it was
between three and four o'clock in the morning. He
knocked at the window, but it appears that be could
not rouse the slumberers without calling out to them,
for the master of the house and his step-mother were
awakened by a child exclaiming that he heard Allan
Brec's voice without. Both Macdonald and his step-
mother held a conference with Allan, with whom

VOL. I. O

82 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

they had a family connexion. Their evidence was of
the most brief and, naturally, most unsatisfactory
kind. Allan, they both said, gave them the first in-
formation of the murder committed the evening
before, but he entered into no particulars — merely
told the simple fact, and they made no kind of remark
or inquiry. He declined to enter the house. He told
his friends that he made his untimely visit to bid
them farewell; that he was to leave the country, and
that he was then on his way to Rannoch.

We next find him seeking refuge in a place
called Koilasonachan, spoken of by the witnesses
•accustomed to the neighbouring solitudes of Grlenooe
and Rannoch as so wild and remote, that to find
a man lurking there at once suggested that he
must have been after evil deeds. A bowman, John
Brec Maccoll, as he was passing through this wilder-
ness, heard a whistle from a height, and, looking up,
saw Allan Brec there. After their salutations, the
bowman told him (by his own account) that it could
be no good action that took him to such a place.
He said he had heard the rumour of the murder,
and charged Allan with it. Allan asked eagerly
what he had learned about the murder. He said:
" He had seen no person from the strath of Appin,
but that two poor women, who had come up Glencoe,

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART. 83

were telling that Glenure was murdered on Thurs-
day evening in the wood of Letter-More ; and that
two people were seen going from the place where he
was murdered; and that he, Allan Brec, was said to
be one of them; that Allan Brec answered he had
no concern in it; and that, if his information was
right, there was but one person about the murder;
and that as he (himself) was idle about the coun-
try, he was sure he would be suspected of it, but
that that would give him little concern if he
had not been a deserter, which would go harder
upon him, in case he was apprehended, than any-
thing that could be proved against him about the
murder."

Allan, in want of necessary food, besought the
bowman to go to Callart or Glencoe to procure
some oatmeal for him. He intended immediately
to flee to France, but lacked the pecuniary means.
To facilitate his object, he desired the bowman to
take a letter to Fortwilliam. His method of pro-
viding writing materials in the wilderness showed
considerable resources of ingenuity. " Allan Brec,"
said the witness, u looked about among the trees,
and finding a wood-pigeon's quill, made a pen of
it ; and having made ink of some powder he took
out of a powder-horn that was in his pocket, he
wrote a letter. 1 ' The messenger was told, that if he
G2

84 TRIAL OP JAMES STEWART.

were caught with that letter he must swallow it
rather than let it be found. A girl from the nearest
cottage, going after stray cattle, had caught a
glimpse of Allan, and, returning home in fright,
said she had seen the figure of a man in the wilds
of Koilasonachan. She was told that there were
bogles or ghosts there, and that she had better hold
her peace as to what she had seen. Through cir-
cuitous messengers, who could not be got to confess
the full amount of their charitable exertions, the
money he required was conveyed to Allan, along
with his French clothes ; and the short Highland
coat and bonnet were afterwards found left on the
heath.

Allan Brec ultimately escaped to the Continent.
Great efforts were made by the government to get
him apprehended in France, where he sought an
asylum; and it is probable that they were the
more zealous in the cause, because his apprehension
might have rendered unnecessary some proceedings
to be afterwards described, which exposed them to
unpleasant reflections. An instrument worthy of
such an object — James Drummond, the son of Rob
Roy — had, as we have already seen, been employed
to kidnap him. He was not so successful, however,
with the daring mountaineer as he had been with
the youthful widow of Edinbellie ; and Allan Brec,

TKIAL OF JAMES STEWAKT. 85

discovering his object, threatened to slay him, and
made him feel that his life was not very safe in the
neighbourhood of his intended victim.*

Allan Brec was thus never brought to trial. The
evidence against James Stewart, as his accomplice,
imperfect and unsatisfactory as it is, leaves no doubt
that it was Allan who drew the trigger. Perhaps
a fastidious modern jury might, before convicting,
require some things which remain vague to be
explained; but for all the purposes of the historical
critic, who cannot hang, the evidence is sufficient
for finding a verdict. This, however, is by far the
least interesting part of the tragedy. The pro-
ceedings against James Stewart of Aucharn, Allan's

* Sir Walter Scott has preserved the following notice of
Allan Brec:—" About 1789, a friend of mine, who was then
residing in Paris, was invited to see some procession which was
supposed likely to interest him, from the windows of an apart-
ment occupied by a Scottish Benedictine priest. He found
sitting by the fire a tall, thin, raw-boned grim looking old man,
with the petit croix of St. Louis. His visage was strongly marked
by the irregular projections of the cheek-bones and chin. His
eyes were grey. His grizzled hair exhibited marks of haying
been red, and his complexion was weatherbeaten, and remark-
ably freckled. Some civilities in French passed between the
old man and my friend, in the course of which they talked of
the streets and squares of Paris, till at length the old soldier,
for such he seemed, and such he was, said, with a sigh, in the
old Highland accent, ' Deil ane o' them a' is worth the Hie
Street of Edinburgh.' On inquiry, this admirer of Auld Keekie,
which he was never to see again, proved to be Allan Brec
Stew«ti. n — Introduction to Sob Boy, p. SI.

86 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

kinsman, are far more worthy of notice than the
events connected with the murder itself.

The interest which James Stewart took in the
protection of the tenants who were to be ejected
has been already noticed. He had been heard to
say that, if baffled in the court of session, he
would bring the injuries inflicted on the tenants
under the notice of parliament; and, if beaten
there, — he added, after a pause, " that he behoved
to take the only other remedy that remained." The
conversation one day turning on an officer of the
army who had been branded for cowardice, Stewart
passionately exclaimed, that Campbell, the new
factor, deserved the brand as well, for he had
challenged the man, and he would not fight himself.
He desired Campbell to be told that he proclaimed
his dishonour. Like his kinsman, Allan Brec, he
spoke vigorously in his cups ; and was, like him,
apt to take them in the premises of hostile publi-
cans of the name of Campbell, whose houses nothing
but the dire calls of what is in Scotland so ex-
pressively called " drouth " would have induced
him to enter. To one of the persons who thus had
motives for noticing his conduct with uncharitable
constructions, he refused, after partaking of his
liquor, to offer the customary courtesies of the
district, observing that he would rather see all of

TRIAL OF JAMES 8TEWAET. 87

his name hanged ; and there were some Campbells
whose feet he would readily draw down while they
were suspended — alluding to an old hangman's
duty which the patent slip has superseded. In
these dissipated fits, he would scatter suspicious
hints among the tenantry or commoners. Thus,
drawing a picture of the new factor's cunning and
rapacity, he continued to observe, that if he " went
on in the same way, it was likely he would in five
years be Laird of Appin. And upon the witness*
and the said John More and John Beg Maccoll say-
ing that that was likely to happen, the said James
Stewart answered, that that was the fault of the
commoners, or followers ; for, however he, or
people in circumstances like him, would shift for
themselves, they, the commoners, would be very
badly off; and added, that he knew commoners
once in Appin who would not allow Glenure to go
on at such a rate/' One is here reminded of
" There was a Brutus once, that would have
brooked," &c. Of such a kind were the threats and
bravadoes of the discarded factor against his suc-
cessor; and on one occasion he had even said he would
waste a shot on him though he went on his knees.

* In this and the subsequent extracts from evidence, the
word witness is substituted for the Scottish technical term
"deponent"

88 TKIAL OF JAMES STEWABT.

What was of far more consequence, Allan Brec
was James Stewart's kinsman, and lived in big
house. It appeared pretty clear that the murderer
had his kinsman's clothes on when he committed
the deed; but he had worn them on other occa-
sions. Of some guns which Stewart possessed, one
was stated to be amissing on the day of the murder,
and it was afterwards found discharged. The guns,
along with some broadswords, and other weapons,
were sedulously concealed by Stewart's family im-
mediately after the murder. This, however, was in
itself a natural, and almost necessary arrangement,
for the disarming act was in operation; and the
inquiry following on a murder would certainly
render Stewart liable to the penalties for disobe-
dience of the act. On hearing the first rumour of
the death of Campbell, he had exclaimed — " God
bless me, is he shot ?" as if anticipating the method
of the death ; and he refused to join those who
were assembling round the body.

Stewart was found making desperate efforts to
obtain some ready money. He sent a pressing
message to a person in Fortwilliam with whom
he had made a bargain about cows, to send him
the money, in anticipation of his own fulfilment
of the bargain. The man was at first angry and
impatient, as at an unreasonable request; but he

TSIAL OF JAMES STEWABT. 89

afterwards complied, probably on receiving a hint
of the purpose for which the money was to be
used. This money was conveyed to Allan Brec,
to enable him to leave the country. There could
be no doubt that Stewart, with all his family
and partisans, assisted Allan Brec in making his
escape; and did what in them lay, by concealing
his clothes and otherwise, to shield him from justice.
The only other incident of any importance bearing
against Stewart was, that the bowman who talked
with Allan Brec in Koilasonachan, reported him to
have remarked that probably Stewart's family would
be suspected of the murder ; that probably both
father and son might be apprehended for it; and
the son's tongue was not so good as the father's.

No law, like that which in England affected
accessories after the fact, had taken root in Scot-
land, and Stewart was brought to trial as a planner
and adviser of the murder. There is no use, at
the present day, of denying that the proceedings
against him were unjust, according to modern
notions of the administration of the law; and that
the evidence was insufficient to justify a verdict of
wilful murder against him. We know, however,
and it was well known by the government in that
day, that Stewart, along with many others, had
tacitly adopted a position which baffled the laws in

90 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWAET.

their fair administration* Granting .that he had
deliberately concocted the murder, the arrangement
never could have been proved by the evidence of
his own kinsmen and supporters ; and, of course, a
secret compact could not be easily proved by mem-
bers of the hostile clans.

But it is unnecessary to suppose that such a
compact had been made. It was sufficient to
paralyse the government, that, when a man like
Allan Brec committed a deed in accordance with
the feelings and devout wishes, though not the insti-
gations of his kindred and supporters, they should
all remain dumb and motionless! or should bestir
themselves only to hide him, and help him to
escape. The government was resolved, without
any scruple, to break through such a system, by
making an example; and we shall now see how it
set about this business.

The lord justice-general is the head or pre-
sident of the high court of justiciary, or supreme
criminal tribunal, of Scotland. Down to so late a
time as the reign of William IV., it was an office
merely honorary conferred on some influential
peer. During the irregularities immediately pre-
ceding the revolution, the justice-general of course
employed his offiee for every purpose of oppres-
sion and rapacity; but it had subsequently settled

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWABT. 91

down into practice that the criminal justice of the
country was to be administered by professional and
responsible judges trained in the practice of the law.
Thus the lord justice-general no more thought of
acting in the justiciary than the lord mayor in the
recorder's court. But the Duke of Argyle, the
head of the house of Campbell and of the Hanover
interest, was resolved to preside at the trial of a
Stewart and a Jacobite for the murder of a Camp-
bell and a Hanoverian.

It was considered that even if the nominal head
of the justiciary court should sit in judgment, he
ought to do so only in the high court, as it was
termed, in Edinburgh, and that it was not con-
sistent with his office of president of the chief
tribunal to act as a judge on circuit. But there were
irresistible temptations for his breaking on this oc-
casion through every established custom. If the
proceedings were referred to the circuit court,
Stewart would be tried at Inverary, among the
Campbells, who hated him, and in Argyle's own
capital, where he was as absolute as it was pos-
sible for a subject to be. Further still, — it had
not been customary for the lord advocate in person
to conduct prosecutions on circuit; but on the
present occasion that high officer — whether in
deference to the rank of the presiding judge, or on
account of the urgent importance of the occasion —

92 TBIAL OF JAMES STEWABT.

repaired to Inverary to conduct the prosecution. Of
the fifteen jurymen empannelled to give a true and
impartial verdict, eleven bore the name of Camp-
bell. Many of the witnesses could not speak Eng-
lish, and a Campbell acted as interpreter. The
transmission of the evidence through such a medium
gives it a stiff, inanimate character, and there is
little doubt that it bore a Campbell tinge. And
yet, what was to be expected? The prosecutors
would scarcely choose a hostile witness; and were
they to find an impartial man who knew Gaelic !
The witnesses would do their best on the one hand to
baffle and conceal. Evidently they knew much
which they did not tell; and, on the other hand,
there is little doubt that the interpreter would give
a strong tinge to what they did tell. This little
portion in itself is only too characteristic a type of
the whole history.

After such powerful preparations for extracting a
verdict of guilty, it would be superfluous to inquire
into the truth of all that was charged against the
government by the exasperated friends of Stewart.
They complained that the bar had been intimidated.
It was not to be much wondered at, that some
learned counsel found it at that time inconvenient
to go to Inverary. Yet Stewart was ably and gal-
lantly defended; and, indeed, one of his advocates,
Walter Stewart, made an allusion to the peculiari-

TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART. 93

ties of the occasion, which was somewhat of a home-
thrust. " The time was/* he said, " indeed, when
the feeble law was unable to protect the innocent —
when the rules of justice weip broke to pieces by
the ruffian hands of power; then our unhappy
country groaned under the yoke of arbitrary power
— then was scarce the form of a trial; the best, the
greatest of our country-r-even an Argyle — fell a
sacrifice to the call of tyranny. But now, ray lords,
the days which our fathers wished to see, and did
not see, we have the happiness to enjoy. A fair
trial, which the noblest could not obtain, the meanest
are now entitled to, under the protection of laws
guarded by a government ever watchful for the good
of its subjects, under which the keenness of private
prosecutors will meet with no countenance or en-
couragement."

It was admitted that both Stewart and his
family had been subject to hardships unusual and
unconstitutional, in being separately confined in
dungeons, without receiving access to their friends
or professional advisers. But this was remedied
ere it became too late/ and a natural enough cause
was assigned for it They had been placed under
military guard in the prison of Fortwilliam, and
the commanding-officer knowing nothing of legal
rights, or the privileges of the untried, acted on

94 TBIAL OF JAMES STEWABT.

professional notions of duly, and excluded all access
to his captives.

Many occurrences took place which would now
be counted indecencies; — but it must be remem-
bered that the juncture was not half way from the
days of Jeffries to our own. One of the counsel
for the prosecution, whose words must be taken in
connexion with the avowed Jacobitism of the ac-
cused, said: " I must say that his family and
connexions — his character and conduct in public
life, are so many circumstances forming a presump-
tion almost equal to a proof in support of the charge
brought against him." In the face of such declara-
tions, the prisoner's counsel was well justified in
complaining of "an impression which has been
industriously raised and artfully propagated, as if it
were somehow necessary that the pannel should be
found guilty, and as if his being acquitted would
bring a reflection on this part of the kingdom."

The jury found the accused guilty. It is in the
final admonition given by the presiding judge, on
sentencing the unfortunate man to death, that we
now, with astonishment, find the hereditary enmity
of race and party bursting forth through all control
of judicial decorum. One would have expected the
statesman of Walpole's day, and the polished cour-
tier of the age of Chesterfield, incapable, even were

TRIAL 0* JAMES STEWABT. 95

the occasion a far lea solemn one, of saying what
follows. And so at St. Stephen's or St. James's he
doubtless would have been; but in his own capital,
with his retainers around him, looking his enemy
in the face, the old blood of MacCallum More was
up. In his charge to the jury, he said:

" In the year 1715 there broke out a most un-
natural and unprovoked rebellion, soon after the
accession of his late majesty to the throne ; in
which the part your clan acted is well known, so
many being here present that were witnesses of their
composing pact of the rebel army which besieged
this town. This I myself have reason to know. A
royal indemnity soon followed after those treasons
then committed. But, in the year 1719, your
clan, unmindful of their lives and fortunes having
been granted them only two years before, did again
rise in rebellion, and assisted a foreign enemy in an
invasion; in this you are said to have acted a part,
though at that time very young.

" In the year 1745 the restless spirits of the dis-
affected Highlanders again prompted them to raise
a third rebellion, in which you and your clan formed
a regiment in that impious service, and in which
you persevered to the last. The Divine Providence
at first permitted you to obtain some advantages,
which has possibly been to give you time to repent

96 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWABT.

of your crimes. But who can dive into the secrets
of the Almighty! At last Heaven raised up a
great prince, the son of our gracious king, who,
with courage equal to that of his ancestors, and
with conduct superior to his years, did, at one blow,
put an end to all your wicked attempts.

11 If you had been successful in that rebellion,
you had been now triumphant with your confe-
derates, trampling upon the laws of your country,
the liberties of your fellow-subjects, and on the
Protestant religion. Tou might have been giving
the law where you now have received the judg-
ment of it; and we who are this day your judges
might have been tried before one of your mock
courts of judicature, and then you might have
been satiated with the blood of any name or clan
to which you have an aversion."

It must have seemed a solemn mockery to say to
the prisoner in this denunciatory speech, " James
Stewart, you have had a very long and most im-
partial trial. Tou have been prosecuted with all
the moderation consistent with the crime you stood
accused of, and your counsel have defended you
with great ability and with decency."

Immediately on the sentence of death being
passed, the prisoner said:

" My lords, I tamely submit to my hard sen-

TBIAL OF JAMES STEWABT. 97

tence. I forgive the jury, and the witnesses, who
have sworn several things falsely against me; and I
declare, before the great God and this auditory,
that I had no previous knowledge of the murder of
Colin Campell of Glenure, and am as innocent of it
as a child unborn. lam not afraid to die; but
what grieves me is my character — that after ages
should think me capable of such a horrid and bar-
barous murder."

He died with dignity. To the end he main-
tained his innocence, not like one who hoped by
reiterations or prayers to stay his doom, but calmly
and temperately, like one fulfilling a duty to his
name and cause, and seeking only to secure the
good opinion of the candid. He doubtless felt the
importance of his position. It was that of no
common criminal, but of a political martyr to the
expiring cause of the exiled house. To gratify
the sad pride of his kinsmen, it was essential that
he should act the hero, and he was not wanting to
the occasion. He was enrolled in the catalogue of
Jacobite martyrs.

This judicial tragedy, of which an attempt has
been made to afford an impartial account, may
seem to throw a weighty scandal on the institu-
tions of the country where it occurred, and on the
conduct of the party who bent them to such a

VOL. I. H

98 TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

purpose. But if the scandal be admitted, we may
pause a moment before holding that it either shows
the falsity and emptiness of the institutions or the
depravity of the party. It is of some consequence
to look to this at a time when in another part of
the empire we have but just escaped a tampering
with our popular forensic institutions, which circum-
stances of emergency appeared to justify. If such
institutions may be outraged and scandalised, the
very shape and consequences of such outrage and
scandal only show the value of preserving the in-
stitution untouched, that it may be more purely
administered; and if we compare the trial of James
Stewart with other events both in our own and
foreign histories, we may find that it is because jury
trial was the instrument, and because the Hano-
verian government were the perpetrators* that the
case ever became remarkable. Under secret judi-
cial procedure, and an irresponsible government, it
would have scarcely been known or noticed beyond
the province and the generation in. which it oc-
curred.

An unconstitutional government powerful as the
representative government which ruled Britain after
the last Jacobite insurrection, would have certainly
found means of punishing an enemy like James
Stewart. If such a government found its agents

TRIAL OF JAXZ& STEWART. 99

shot m the execution of their duty — saw clearly
that the perpetrators were shielded from justice, and
helped out of the country, by a numerous band of
abettors and partisans — and were able to lay hands
on one man whom they had every reason to believe
a supporter and shielder of such a murderer, if not
his employer and instigator, — would they not have
found means of striking a blow at the system, though
it were through his life? The only difference in the
case, had it occurred under an irresponsible govern-
ment — such a government as the Stewarts tried to
establish — would have been that the proceedings
would have been secret. Their exact nature, and the
precise violations of justice committed in them,
would have been unknown ; the scandal would
have been avoided.

But here everything was open as day. The ar-
raignment in the midst of enemies — the chief enemy
of all on the bench; the angry denunciations of the
law-officers and the judge; the jury of Campbells;
all these things were published to the world, and
were eagerly and fiercely commented on. The institu-
tions were scandalised, but not undermined. True,
the party accomplished their object— the man was
hanged. But many a warm friend of the govern-
ment looked with regret on that conspicuous scene
of unbridled animosity. The proceedings were
h2

100. TRIAL OF JAMES STEWART.

energetically censured, not only by the Jacobites,
but by their antipodes, the friends of freedom and
onward progress. No one dared to defend them. In
legal commentaries, the trial is always referred to
as a perversion of justice. For a century it has
stood forth as a beacon of warning to all who shall
pervert the great free institutions of the country to
party purposes. It shows emphatically how these
institutions have in their publicity an alarm bell,
that rings loudly, and tells all the world when they
are bent to unworthy purposes.

THE DAMEN EXPEDITION,

AJTD

THE TRIAL OF CAPTAIN GREEN

FOR PIRACY AND MURDER.

On the 11th of April, 1705, the commander of
the English trading ship, the Worcester, with two. of
his crew, were hanged in chains on the sands of
Leith, having been convicted by the Scottish Court
of Admiralty of piracy and murder. It was a ge-
neral impression at the time, that their lives were
not forfeited to the due administration of justice
and the punishment of crime, but that their trial
and execution were virtually a retaliation for national
injuries, and a flinging of defiance in the face of
England. The event thus opened to view so dismal
a gulf of national animosity and unscrupulous hatred,
that it thoroughly alarmed the friends of peace and
progress, and urged them to hurry on and complete

102 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

with all practical rapidity that legislative union of
the two nations which seemed to be the only pro-
tection from a deadly war, wherein wealth power
and pride on the one side, would be met by
courage endurance and unquenchable hatred on the
other. It may seem strange that occurrences, in them-
selves full of incident, and immediately productive
of an event, so important in European history as
that which, by mutual consent and equal distribu-
tion of privileges, made two powerful nations be-
come one, and extinguished the divisions and jea-
lousies incompatible with the existence of a great
British empire, should be hitherto so partially and
inaccurately known, and should remain to be fully
explained in the middle of the nineteenth century.
It is not difficult, however, to find the reason of this.
After the tragedy was accomplished, no party felt
an interest in too minutely examining the affair of
Captain Green. , Those who were successful in pur-
suing him to the scaffold could not very decently
exult in their triumph, and were not anxious to
proclaim, if they could even comfortably pass under
self-examination, the motives on which they had
acted. The friends of peace and the promoters of
the union at the same time desired to bury the past
in oblivion. Thus there was a general disposition
to " hush up," as it is termed, this untoward afiair;

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 103

and for long years afterwards it would have been
difficult to say what prejudices and animosities a
recurrence to it might have aroused. The time has
now, however, long arrived when its details may be
laid bare without much danger that the inquirer
will be misled by national or party prejudices, and
with still less danger that he can arouse any latent
antipathies in the reader.

Although the fate of Green and his fellow- victims
was produced by a national movement— one of those
movements in which mercy and justice to indi-
viduals are too often trodden under the footsteps of
an excited multitude — the event was immediately
connected, as its operative cause, with the ruin of
that celebrated Darien project, from which Scotland
expected 'so much success, and reaped so much
calamity. As the same resources which enable the
present writer to let out long buried light on the
immediate affair of Captain Green also bear on the
events that led to it, there would be much«tempta-
tk>n on this occasion to offer an elucidation of them,
even if they had less connexion than they have with
the trial and execution, which join into the history
of the Darien scheme like the last act of a tragedy*

* It occurred to the present writer a few years ago; when
collecting materials for a projected history of Scotland beginning
after the revolution, to examine the contents of an old oak chest
which had stood in a cellar of the Advocates' Library ;— he could

104 THE DAKIEN EXPEDITION

Soon after the establishment of the revolution
settlement, the ardent feelings of the Scottish people
were turned out of their old channels of religious
controversy and war in the direction of commercial
enterprise. When the crimes and conflicts of Queen
Mary's day — the plots that made her son's reign
precarious — the great conflicts of the Common-
wealth, the persecutions of the Restoration, and the
reaction of the revolution were all over — the vessel
of the state, after having been so long tossed and
strained, felt itself suddenly in the calm waters of
tranquillity and security. Now, if ever, was the time
to turn the national energies to those arts of peace, on
which the impoverished Scots could not help seeing
that the wealth and power of England were based.
Nothing but a guiding mind was necessary to con-
centrate the national ardour, and bear it on upon

find no means of knowing how long— probably from the period
of the union. He was surprised, as well as gratified, by the
richness of this store, consisting of the books and documents of
the Darien Company and its officers, — many of the most curious
of them tied up in dusty bundles, which appeared to hare re-
mained untouched since the dissolution of the company. Some
of the documents — chiefly bearing on the commercial affairs of
the company— were lately printed under the superintendence of
the present writer, for the use of the members of the Bannatyne
Club. The others, including those relating to the affair of
Green, remain still in manuscript. Whenever in the follow-
ing pages no other authority is indicated, this collection of
documents will be understood to supply the material.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 105

one great object, and such a mind appeared at the
time in that of William Paterson.

A singular mystery hangs over the early history
of this man. In the old statistical account of Scot-
land he is claimed as a native of the parish of
Tinwald, in Dumfriesshire; but there is no visible
authority for the statement, and no means of know-
ing that he was a native of Scotland, but the ardent
patriotism sometimes apparent in his writings. His
conduct in after life showed that he was familiar
with distant countries inhabited by savages, and had
sailed in unknown seas: but on the capacity in
which he had adventured himself among them the
assertions of his contemporaries were so conflicting,
that some said he was a zealous Christian mis-
sionary; others, that he was a daring pirate, who
had returned with the earnings of many frightful
iniquities. We find one of the many phamphleteers
of the period speaking of him thus:

44 William Paterson came from Scotland in his
younger years, with a pack on his back, whereof
the print may be seen if he be alive. Having
travelled this country some years, he seated himself
under the wing of a warm widow near Oxford,
where, finding that preaching was an easier trade
than his own, soon found himself gifted with an
Anadabs spirit. Prophets being generally despised

106 THE DAWEN EXPEDITION

at home, he went on the propaganda side account
to the West Indies, and was one of those who settled
the island of Providence a second time. Bnt meet-
ing some hardships and ill-luck there — to wit, a
governor being imposed on them by the King of
England, which his conscience could not admit of —
the property of their constitutions was altered, and
they could no longer be a free port or sanctuary for
buccaneers, prates, and such vermin who had most
need to be reclaimed unto the Church. This dis-
appointment obliged Praedicant Paterson to shake
the dust from off his shoes, and leave that island
under his anathema. He returned to Europe some
twelve years ago with his head full of projects,
having all the achievements of Sir Henry Morgan,
Batt, Sharp, and the buccaneers in his budget He
endeavoured to make a market of his ware in
Holland and Hamburg, but without any success.
He went afterwards to Berlin, opened his pack there,
and had almost caught the Elector of Brandenburg
in the noose, but that miscarried too. He likewise
imparted the same project to Mr. Secretary Blath-
wait, but still with the same success.

" Meeting thus with so many discouragements

in these several countries, he let his project sleep

for some years, and pitched his tent at London,

to matter is never wanting to exercise plodding

AHD CAPTAXH 6BEEK. 107

heads. His former wife being at rest, as well as his
project, he wanted a help that was meet for him,
and not being very nice, went no farther than the
red-faced coffee woman — a widow in Birchin-lane
— whom he afterwards carried to the Isthmus of
Darien; and at her first landing thrust her about
seven foot under ground, to make die possession de
facto of New Caledonia more authentic ."*

Whatever his early life may hare been, it was, at
all events, apparent that he was a man of correct
walk and conversation in his mature years. He
gave expression to many noble sentiments, and ap-
peared to be ever under the influence of serious,
religious convictions. " Above all things," he says
in one of his letters of private counsel, " endeavour
to cultivate the reverence and respect for God and
his religion; for in this there is great gain, not only
in eternity, but in time/' And his correspondence
is full of similar allusions. Ue had an intellect
singularly fertile in projects. He usually is called
the founder of the Bank of England. It would be
more correct to call him the projector. That he
first laid out the design of that great corporation is
admitted by all who have written on its history;
but his name was not practically' associated with it
as a director. It haa been usual to say that Patenon

• A Defence of the Scot* abdicating Darien (1700), pp. 2-4.

108 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

was heartlessly and ungratefully superseded by the
plodding capitalists, for whose slower wits he had
designed a fabric of solid fortune; but his connexion
with the Darien scheme showed -that his capacity
lay far more in projecting than in executing, and it
is quite possible that his name was unknown in the
history of the direction of the bank, simply because
his colleagues found it necessary to prevent him
from practically obstructing the project he had so
ingeniously designed.

In carrying out a new project with which his
fertile brain was teeming, Paterson expected, not
without reason, to find warmer friends and coadjutors
in his own countrymen, and he succeeded at once
in securing the resolute championship of Lord
Belhaven and Fletcher of Saltoun — two impetuous
patriots, who signalised themselves by the tenacious
jealousy with which they strove to keep their
country free from the influence of England. Their
first step was to obtain an act of the parliament of
Scotland, incorporating the subscribers as " The
Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the
Indies." It was passed in 1695. The act appointed
half the shares to be held in Scotland, and by Scots-
men; the other half were open to investment by

reignera, including Englishmen. It was evidently
object of the projectors thus to feed their

AND CAPTAIN GBEEN. 109

patriotic project with English capital, — an attempt
which led the way to all their subsequent calamities.
They immediately opened subscription-books in
London, where they held their meetings, and con-
ducted all their central operations. Those who were
jealous of the great English trading monopolists—
the East India, the Turkey, and the African com-
panies — seized on the opportunity with avidity,
and rapidly subscribed the 300,000/. of stock, being
the half in which foreigners were allowed to invest.
But the great companies became in their turn
alarmed and angry. In those days trade jealousies
were carried out to an exterminating extent, and
there was no cruelty or hardship, slavery included,
which men did not consider themselves justified in
perpetrating " for the promotion of national trade/'
Parliament readily entered on the matter, and the
House of Commons appointed a committee "to
examine what methods were taken for obtaining the
act of parliament passed in Scotland for the company
of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies; and
who were the subscribers thereunto; and who were
the advisers thereof." Many of the English share-
holders were examined and thoroughly frightened;
for to displease the House of Commons, then fresh
in its revolutionary triumph, was to incur a serious
calamity. Many excuses were sought for what it

112 THE DAKIEN EXPEDITION

rault, do subscribe for three thousand pounds stir-
ling." And then follow the Countess of Rothes, the
Earl of Hadington, the Earl of Hopeton, &c.

On the first day the amount subscribed was
50,400/. The capital of the company was limited to
400,000/., and before the end of March the half of
it was subscribed. The books were announced to
\>e closed on the 3rd of August, and on the 1st the
whole capital was subscribed. Though the railway
bills in Scotland for one year — 1846 — authorised
the raising of upwards of sixteen millions, yet, so
extreme was the poverty of the country before the
union, that the engaging for a fortieth part of the
amount was considered a greater marvel. Many
were the devices adopted and the sacrifices made
by those who were most resolute to partake in the
scheme. Old family estates were sold or mortgaged,
unwilling debtors were pushed for payment, and
small driblets of money were collected into one
focus. An examination of the books shows that,
with every effort that could be made, the amount
had slightly exceeded the capacity of the country.
Two of the heaviest adventurers appear in the sub-
scription-book to have come forward for second
subscriptions of 10007. each, which they held for
the company " to complete the quota of 400,000/.
stock/'

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 113

While the Scots were urged on by a mixed
feeling of enthusiastic patriotism and speculative
ambition, they encountered the wrath and ridi-
cule of their haughty neighbours of England.
Abundant were the pasquinades heaped on the
beggarly rivals of English enterprise* An extract
from one effusion, called " Caledonia, or the Pedlar
turned Merchant — a Tragi-Comedy," may suffice as
an indication of their spirit:

" Her neighbours she saw, and cursed them and their gains,
Had gold as they yentured in search on't;
And why should not she, who had guts in her brains,
From a pedlar turn likewise a merchant?

" Such a number of scrawls, and poot-hooks, and marks,
No parish beside this could boast;
As the knights of the thistle, fine blew-ribband sparks,
Set their hands with the knights of the post.

" The nobles, for want of the ready, made o'er
Their estates to promote the design,
And in quality capitals owned they were poor,
And perfectly strangers to com.

" The clergy (mistake me not), those who could read,
Sold their Cabin, and Baxter, and Knox;
And turning the whites of their eyes to succeed,
Blessed the pieces, and paid for large stocks/'

To the question, what was to be done with the
money thus collected? the answer might be given
in the brief expression — Everything. The com-
pany were to trade in all kinds of commodities to
all parts of the world. They were to be ship-

TOL. i. I

114 THE DAKIEN EXPEDITION

owners, agriculturists, and manufacturers. The
minute-books show, in rich confusion, engage-
ments for the purchase or making of serges, swords,
pistols, stockings, shoes, nails, combs, buttons,
knives, barrels of ale, hides, horn-spoons, and
hunting-knives. They begun to build warerooms
beyond the city wall of Edinburgh, and close by
the Bristo Port. Conducting all their operations on
a grand and liberal scale, their edifices were erected
in the style of the French palaces. A fragment of
one of them, noticeable for its commanding and
symmetrical design, still exists, and, alas ! too charac-
teristically serves the purpose of a pauper lunatic
asylum for the city of Edinburgh. The company
were to be the general underwriters and bankers for
Scotland. While the present writer was examining
their books, a hard, metallic substance dropped out
of one of them, and rung upon the floor; it was
the copper plate on which the blank for their bank-
notes was engraved. A check-book showed that
they had issued them to the extent of several
thousands of pounds.

But the grand project of the company, and that
in which it suffered so disastrous a shipwreck, was
announced in these terms:

" Resolved, that a settlement or settlements be
made with all convenient speed upon some island,

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 115

river, or place in Africa or the Indies, or both, for
establishing and promoting the trade and naviga-
tion of this company."

Here we find abundant traces* of the restless
organising spirit of Paterson. The committee of
foreign trade have repeated entries in their minntes
about " several manuscript books, journals, reckon-
ings, exact eliminated maps, and other papers of
discovery in Africa and the East and West Indies,
produced by Mr. Paterson," and "upon hearing
and examining several designs and schemes of trade
and discovery by him proposed," it was resolved,
" that some particular discoveries of the greatest
moment to the designs of this company ought to
be committed to writing and sealed by Mr. Pater-
son, and not opened but by special order of the
court of directors, and that only when the aflairs of
the company shall of necessity require the same."

It was not wonderful that a mysterious grandeur
surrounded the secret suggestions of the schemer,
and that a whisper went abroad that Scotland was
about with ease to achieve one of the greatest commer-
cial triumphs since the discovery of the New World.
The project still charms us by its greatness, and
notwithstanding its failure at that time, its practical
wisdom is attested by the fact that Britain and the
United States are now occupied in carrying it out.
12

116 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

The plan was to take possession of the Isthmus of
Darien or Panama, establish free ports on either coast,
and be the channel of all the commerce between
the east and the west of the Old World, and
the two seaboards of the New. Two paragraphs
selected from the many documents written by
Paterson, will serve to show the vastness of his
views, and the persuasive power with which he ex-
pressed them :

" The time and expense of navigation to China,
Japan, the Spice Islands, and the far greatest part
of the East Indies, will be lessened more than half,
and the consumption of European commodities and
manufactures will soon be more than doubled.
Trade will increase trade, and money will beget
money, and the trading world shall need no more
to want work for their hands, but will rather want
hands for their work. Thus this door of the seas
and key of the universe, with anything of a reason-
able management, will of course enable its pro-
prietors to give laws to both oceans, and to become
arbitrators of the commercial world, without being
liable to the fatigues, expenses, and dangers, in
contracting the guilt and blood of Alexander and
Ceesar. In all our empires that have been anything
like universal, the conquerors have been obliged to
seek out and court their conquests from afar; but

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 117

the universal force and influence of this attractive
magnet is such as can much more effectually bring
empire home to the proprietor's door.

" But from what hath been said, you may easily
perceive that the nature of these discoveries are
such as not to be engrossed by any one nation or
people with exclusion to others ; nor can it be thus
attempted without evident hazard and ruin, as we
see in the case of Spain and Portugal, who by their
prohibiting any other people to trade, or so much as to
go to or dwell in the Indies, have not only lost that
trade they were not able to maintain, but have de-
populated and ruined their countries therewith; so
that the Indies have rather conquered Spain and
Portugal than they have conquered the Indies.
For by their permitting all to go out and none to
come in, they have not only lost the people which
are gone to these remote and luxuriant regions, but
such as remain are become wholly unprofitable and
good for nothing. Thus, not unlike the case of the
dog in the fable, they have lost their own country,
and yet not gotten the Indies. People and their
industry are the true riches of a prince or nation;
and in respect to them all other things are but
imaginary. This was well understood by the people
of Rome, who, contrary to the maxims of Sparta
and Spain, by general naturalisation, liberty of

118 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

conscience, and immunity of government, far more
effectually and advantageously conquered and kept
the world, than ever they did or possibly could have
done by the sword."*

Such were the preliminaries on which a small
fleet sailed from Leith Roads on the 26th of July,
1698, under propitious sunshine, and amidst the
plaudits of an excited multitude, congregated from
all the southern districts of Scotland.

On the 30th of October, a passenger who kept a
diary records that they " anchored in a fine bay,
about six leagues to the west of the Gulf of Darien.
There came two canoes, with several Indians on
board. They were very free, and not at all shy.
They spoke some few words of English and indif-
ferent Spanish. We gave them victuals and drink,
which they used very freely, especially the last. In
their cups we endeavoured to pump them, who told
us they had expected us these two years; that we
were very welcome; and that all the country was at
war with the Spaniard. They got drunk and lay on
board all night. In the morning, when they went
away, they got each an old hat, a few twopenny
glasses and knives, with which they seemed ex-
tremely pleased."

In a short time, the most brilliant hopes of the
* Daliymple'f Memoirs, it, 118.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 119

adventurers appeared to be more than realised. The
settlers wrote home about the gold dust found on
the shore, deposited from the sand taken up in
wooden ladles. They mentioned the excellent game
and the pleasant hunting parties. One writer not
tmpoetically described a pleasure party resting at
night in hammocks of silk grass: "The night was
pleasant and refreshing, and everybody slept as well
as if he had been in the best furnished chamber;
there was all round a mighty silence, and the
pleasant murmuring of the wind in the tops of the
trees gently moved us to sleep."* He spoke of u that
delicious fruit called the pine-apple, shaped some-
thing like an artichoke, as big as a man's head/ 9
which grows wild and ripens abundantly at all times
of the year, "and seems to taste of all the delicious
fruits together;" and the vegetable marrow, which
" has a thousand delights in its taste, and may sup-
ply the defects of all sorts of fruits/'f With such
luxurious commodities were mingled many of a
more vulgar but not unimportant order — sugar-
canes, spices, and dye-woods.

On the 26th of December, 1698, a despatch from
the council of the colony stated that its " health,

* The History of Caledonia, &c* by a Gentleman lately ar-
rired. 1699. P. 42.
t P. 47.

120 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

fruitfulness, and good situation/' exceeded their ex-
pectations.

" In fruitfulness this country seems not to give
place to any in the world; for we have seen several
of the fruits, as cocoa-nuts, whereof chocolate is
made, bonellos, sugar-canes, maize, oranges, plan-
tains, mango, yams, and several others, all of them
of the best of their kind anywhere found.

" Nay, there is hardly a spot of ground here but
what may be cultivated; for even upon the veiy
tops and sides of the hills and mountains there is
commonly three or four feet deep of rich earth,
without so much as a stone to be found therein.
Here is good hunting and fowling, and excellent
fishing in the bays and creeks of the coast. ,,#

Paterson gave assurance of that most tempting of
all glittering bates — gold — being abundant in the
colony. " Besides the mines," he said, " already
discovered and wrought, the gold found in the sands
of almost every river near your settlement, and
other things observable, do sufficiently demonstrate
that there still remain other great and valuable dis-
coveries to be made." We now, at all events, know
that the precious metal is found at no great distance
from Darien; and as a colony of the Scottish or any
other persevering people settled there must have in
* Quoted, Inquiry into the Causes, &o, p. 104.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 121

time discovered the neighbouring mines of metallic
riches, one cannot help feeling that the untimely
fate of this enterprise may be said to have changed
the history of Europe, by delaying for upwards of
a century and a half the development of a source
of enterprise, which, if possessed by Britain in
William DDL's reign, might have materially affected
the character and progress of British colonisation
and commerce. The deposits of gold dust in the
sand taken up in wooden ladles are entirely in ac-
cordance with Californian experience, and one would
readily and naturally believe in such a feature, if
told of Darien and its neighbourhood, at the present
day. Yet so had fate determined to blast all the
brilliant visions of these adventurers, like the fiends
who turn ill-gotten wealth to heaps of rubbish, that
what had been mistaken for gold dust was found —
at least so the colonists in their disappointment said
— to be nothing more valuable than a glittering
micacious schist.

The first calamities suffered by the colonists were
from the enmity of the Spaniards. Treaties were
made with the neighbouring chiefs — willing, like
all savage leaders, to make with any one any kind
of agreement that promised immediate profit. But
the Spaniards professed to have an indefinite empire
in Central America, and it was clear that if they

122 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

could they would drive out any other nation endea-
vouring to settle there. They maintained that die
settlement was an infringement of the treaty of
Ryswick, and it was natural that they should be
unable to comprehend that Scotland was a free
country with an independent legislation, not bound
to fulfil the conditions undertaken for England. The
Spanish ambassador presented a formal memorial
against the colony at the court of St. James's ; and it
is said that he was induced to do so, not by the in*
structions of his own court, but through English and
Dutch trade influence. At the commencement of
the year 1699 an engagement, or rather a skirmish,
took place between the colonists and a party of
Spaniards, in which, according to the Scottish
account^, the enemy were signally beaten. Still a
return of two killed and twelve wounded was made,
which stung the national feeling with a sense of
outrage unavenged, A vessel belonging to the com-
pany, having stuck on a rock near Carthagena, was
seized by the governor, and the crew were impri-
soned. The company sent a. messenger with ere*
dentials to complain of this outrage; but as the
council reported to their constituents at home r
u the governor having called a council, and broke
open our letters, threw them away, with the act of
parliament and letters patent, in a most disdainful

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 123

manner, calling us rogues and pirates." In the
mean time the crew of the vessel were sent to
Spain, where they were formally tried and con-
demned to death as pirates. They were not exe-
cuted, the affair of the trial evidently being intended
more for diplomatic than judicial purposes, but they
were subjected to all the hardships and ignominies
of criminals, and the exasperation of their country-
men was fed by the intentional publicity given to
proceedings which it was known that the king
would not resent. Copies and translations of the
judicial documents are among the business papers
of the company, and some of them seem to be odd
enough. Thus a document professing to be a judg-
ment of a Spanish court, after a preamble, proceeds
thus:

" The declaration being perused, we find that we
ought to condemn, and do condemn, Captain Robert
Paton, I}. Spence, John Malach, and James Gra-
ham to die: the form how, is reserved to us; and
that David Wilson be set at liberty for being under
age; and we do confiscate all the goods of the said
four persons, and all the merchandise of the ship
Dolphin: and to the intent it may be executed so,
'tis ordered that a copy of this sentence, authenti-
cated, be sent to Carthagena, and that the goods
being sold to be at the king's disposal, &c, and

124 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

finding by said declaration, &c, to be guilty the
Duke of Hamilton, my Lord Pemur [Panmure],
the Marquis of Tevathall [Marquis of Tweeddale],
and the rest of the persons in Scotland who formed
this company without the king's leave 'to invade
and settle, 'tis just they should be punished for the
preservation .and good peace of the two crowns
Spain and England; all which ought to be made
known to the King of England by the ambassador
there, and the ill consequences that may follow to
all Europe by such proceedings."

But the poor colonists had to encounter enemies
worse even than the Spaniards. While their fellow-
countrymen of Scotland, on hearing of their safe
and triumphant arrival, were holding illuminations,
ringing bells, and returning thanks in the churches,
disease was breaking the spirits and thinning the
numbers of the adventurers. The hardy Scots
were prepared for danger and conflict — foj all that
the courage of man could accomplish, and all that
a frame braced by the north wind and the storm
could meet and resist. But they were not prepared
for the insidious miasmas of the tropics — the deep
masses of rotting vegetable matter which steam forth
poison under the burning sun — for the jungles where

" The deadly vines do weep
Their venemous tears, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew."

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 125

For such an evil they seemed to have been totally
and recklessly unprepared. In the depression pro-
duced by sickness and misfortune, the colonists now
began to ask each other for what they had emi-
grated? They were, it is true, to be the great
channel of the world's trade, but somehow »or other
it was not coming their way. In fact, they were
isolated from all the world ; for not only the Spanish,
but even the French, who were contemplating set-
tlement in Central America, counted them inter-
lopers, while their English fellow-subjects, as we
shall see, were their worst enemies. No arrange-
ment had been made rapidly to supply them with
necessaries from home. The intervening season was
one of scarcity and hardship in Scotland, and in
the earliest despatches which the settlers received,
they were told that they could get nothing from
the scanty stores of their own country, but were
furnished with letters of credit on the English
colonies — letters which were not honoured, for the
reasons presently to be mentioned.

The policy and schemes of King William were
greatly disturbed by this project. He could not
afford to quarrel with the great mercantile interests
of England, which, as we have seen, declared deadly
hostility to the new adventure, and, indeed, to any
attempts on the part of Scotland to compete with

126 THE DAKIEN EXPEDITION

them in trade and colonisation. To the address of
the House of Commons against the company already
mentioned, he made answer, " That he had been ill
served in Scotland, but he hoped some remedies
might be found to prevent the inconveniences which
might arise from the act."* The king dismissed
some of his Scottish ministers, and endeavoured
to adjust the official administration of the country
to his views, but no minister dared to check the
national feeling, or was prepared to purchase the
countenance of the king by services which would
be branded as the grossest national treachery. Thus
the king could not oppose the movement in Scot-
land, but he was resolved that it should have rather
discouragement than assistance elsewhere. The
remonstrances of Spain justified his severity, and
completed all that was wanting to his determination
to baffle the project, and undermine the company.
He would not have permitted any interest, which he
viewed even with partiality, to interfere with his
European policy. His great aim was to destroy the
continental preponderance of France, and he would
not at that time have permitted the most cherished
national interests of Scotland to involve him in a
dispute with Spain. He therefore unhesitatingly
abandoned the projectors to the mercy of that
* Pari. Hist, v., 976.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 127

power, and allowed it to be understood that the
Scottish act of parliament and letters patent were
mere waste paper. But not content with thus aban-
doning them, he instructed the governors of the
colonies in the Atlantic, through the English
secretary of state, to issue proclamations against
them. The form of proclamation adopted was : " I
do strictly charge and require all and every his
majesty's subjects that upon no pretence whatever
they hold any correspondence with the Scots afore-
said, or give them any assistance with arms, ammu-
nition, provision, or anything whatsoever, either by
themselves, or any other for them; nor assist them
with any of their shipping, or of the English
nations, upon pain of his majesty's displeasure,
and suffering the severest punishment."

In these circumstances, the failure to supply the
colonists with provisions was equivalent to leaving
them to starvation, since the English colonies dared
not if they would supply them according to the
credit sent out from Scotland. After having re-
mained for seven months, every day seeing their
numbers decrease, the abject remnant took to their
ships as the last resort. A fellow-countryman, who
saw some of them seeking refuge in New York,
observed that the necessity which had driven them
forth could easily be inferred, " for famine and death

128 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

were discernible in their countenances at the first
aspect." Paterson's spirit stood out to the last.
Even in the death-blow of the proclamations he
could see no absolute reason for abandoning the
enterprise, and proposed that the colonists should take
to the vessels, " and live upon turtling and fishing
for some time, till we should see if any news or re-
cruits came from Scotland." In his official report
to his constituents he gave this pathetic account of
his difficulties : " Although considering our low and
depressed condition for want of supplies, the pro-
hibiting the king's English subjects from trading,
or so much as corresponding with us, was very dis-
couraging, yet the declaring we had broken the
peace, and by consequence declaring us pirates be-
fore we had been once heard or summoned to
answer, so very contrary to the usual proceeding
even in case of real piracy, was most of all sur-
prising, and became the general occasion of people's
concluding, that the long silence of our country
proceeded from no other cause but that they were
browbeaten out of it, and durst not so much as
send word to us to shift for ourselves." When
the final departure took place, his spirit, so long
unnaturally maintained, broke at once, and in
the expressive terms of a bystander, "The grief
has broke Mr. Paterson's heart and brain, and

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 129

now he's a child, they may do what they will for
him."

The fugitives embarked, without any distinct
intentions, "for the first port Providence might
carry them to," as one who witnessed their
departure expressed it. They set sail in three
ships, which from sickness and extermination they
were unable to manage in any but the finest wea-
ther. Of the first of the vessels which reached
New York, the company's correspondent said : " The
Caledonia^ which weighed anchor first, has thrown
overboard one hundred men who died since they
left Darien, their whole complement or equal share
of men being but three hundred in all. And yet
they reckon themselves the healthiest ship of all the
three; and, notwithstanding of all this, they have
loosed and are loosing men who are dying daily
in this place since their arrival."

It was made a question of difficulty whether, after
the king's proclamations, the unfortunate fugitives
could be on any terms supplied with food. It was
at once decided that they could not traffic for it:
and it was only at last by humanity prevailing
over prudence that they were permitted to pur-
chase, on the credit of the company, the food neces-
sary to sustain life. In the West Indies, the pro-
clamations were more sternly interpreted, and one

TOL I. K

130 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

of the vessels landing at Port Royal was seized
and condemned as a prize; but this proceeding was
not sanctioned by the home government, and the
vessel was subsequently released.

So far the history of the Darien expedition ap-
pears to be a narrative of pure oppression by a
strong country on a weak. Justice, however, re-
quires the investigator, writing after the lapse of a
century and a half has buried the sufferings and
animosities of persons and nations, to show that the
company were not utterly blameless martyrs. They
had mistaken their capacity when they tried to
compete with the long-practiced traders of England.
Their goods were ill-sorted; they did not know
how to trade in them; they wanted extravagant
profits, and did not readily adopt the merchants'
doctrine of submitting to fate and selling off
miscalculated merchandise at what it will bring.
Worse still — instead of having the government of
their colony firmly attached to a predominant home
administration — at least, until it could govern itself
— it was embarked with a general license to make
a constitution for itself. It might be maintained
that there was in this more of necessity than choice;
since the king had cast off, instead of cherishing
and protecting, the infant colony. This should have
rendered it more imperative on those who managed

AND CAPTAIN GREEK. 1SI

the expedition to have a system of government
organised beforehand, -which — if it were not enforce-
able by a central regal authority — might at all events
have the sanction of the holders of the purse at
home, who should aid the colony with the large
funds subscribed to the company, so far as it
followed the constitution under which it was de-
spatched, but no further. A very ingenious con-
stitution was framed for the colony, but it was un-
fortunately framed by the colonists themselves, in-
stead of by those who had sent them out, and thus
wanted central controlling authority. Each member
of the colony was at liberty to struggle for power
and emolument; and the conflict was one in which
the unscrupulous appear to have often gained their
tads, by the submission of those who thought that
any system of rule was better than anarchy. An elec-
tive president was appointed. Paterson desired that
ibis officer should at least hold power for a month.
Bat he was among spirits too impatient to submit
to even so long an inequality, and the insane ar-
rangement of shifting the president every week was
adopted. Selfish as they were, the aims of the
leading colonists naturally grouped themselves into
partisanship; and among others there were the
seamen's and the landsmen's parties, each hating and
undermining the other. In the midst of their

132 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

common miseries they could not abstain from
treasuring up accusations against each other to
perplex and further distress their fellow-sufferers in
Scotland.

But an investigation of their private papers gives
reason for suspecting that they were not entirely
free of the great maritime vice of the age, which
simply consisted in those who had a force on the
high seas confounding friends and enemies. One of
the great causes of alarm to the colonists— one of
those things which seem to have so utterly paralysed
them — was a rumour, which some of them mention
in their private letters, that the harshness of
William III. towards them was merely a prepara-
tion for their being, so soon as they could be appre-
hended, tried and hanged as pirates. Now, singular
as it may appear, since no such charge against
them seems ever to have been made even by their
enemies — a charge which one would think the go-
vernment of William would have followed up with
the utmost rigour — there is reason, from their own
private papers, to believe that they were not quite
clear on this matter, and that conscience made
cowards of them. Not that, supposing the inference
from what we are going to quote to be even of
the most unfavourable kind, it is to be con-
founded with ordinary robber piracy. In the high

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 133

seas at that time there were alliances and conflicts,
peace and war, without reference to treaties and
declarations issued at Paris and London. Each
European war lingered and died gradually away in
the conflicts of half-privateer, half-pirate vessels,
among the keys of the American gulfs, and some
European wars had their first commencement in
like distant conflicts. The Darien colonists were,
perhaps, no nicer than their neighbours; and it was
difficult for them to point out their friends— easy
enough to find their enemies. French and Spanish
vessels they appear to have seized when they
could; they considered themselves at war with these
nations. But they appear also to have laid hands
on an English colonial vessel — a daring act, to say
the least of it. Paterson, in his private report, speaks
of it as a matter deeply to be regretted, and explains
how he himself had been involved in it. A boat's
crew from a Jamaica vessel had been detained on
shore, under the plea that a boy belonging to the
colony was confined in the vessel. The boy made
his appearance, either having been released or never
having been kidnapped, but still the boat's crew
were detained. Patereon then proceeds to relate
what followed in a manner which leaves much to be
inferred:

"Mr. Wilmot stayed till the afternoon; and

134 ' THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

before he went away I came to Mr. Mackay's hut,
and Mr. Wilmot came also to take Lis leave. The
rest of the councillors were then together, and upon
my coming they call me in, and Mr. Mackay pre-
sents me a paper to sign, which contained a warrant
to Captain Robert Drummond to take boats and go
and bring in Captain Mathias his sloop. When I
asked what reasons they had for it, Mr. Mackay
answered, that they were informed that this sloop
was a Spanish sloop, and was fraughted by three
Spanish captains now on board her, and bound for
Portubell, with I know not what, for a treasure of
gold and silver bars; and added, I warrant you will
not meddle, for your friend Mr. Wilmot is con-
cerned. This usage did not please me. But, how-*
ever, I told them if she was a Spanish sloop I was
as ready as they; but if belonging to any other
nation I would not be concerned. But, however,
I signed the warrant to bring in the sloop. When
she was brought, instead of a Spanish we found her
a Jamaica sloop with two Spanish passengers, and,
as I heard, about eighty or one hundred pounds
value in pieces of eight, Spanish pistolls, and gold
dust When I found this I must needs say I was
very angry, and endeavoured to get the sloop and
men discharged next day, as being an English bot-
tom. To this effect I laid the law before Pennicook,

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 135

and afterwards to Mr. Mackay, who, by this time,
had brought the men and money out of the sloop.
Upon this I said I would write home on this matter,
and then left them. Upon this occasion, God
knows, my concern was not upon my own account,
or any humour of my own, but the true love of
justice and good of the colony; in which concern
and spirit I heartily wished that they might not
have cause to repent of their inhuman usage of
those before any other friendly strangers came to
visit them — or to this effect. When I was gone,
there was a council called, consisting of Pennicook,
Mackay, Montgomery, and Jolly, where, as the
secretary told me afterwards, they confirmed the
taking of the two Spaniards and the money from
on board the Jamaica sloop."

It is singular that through all the fierce contro-
versy of the day, the admission of a charge mak-
ing apparently a close approach to piracy, should
lie among the private papers of the company
unnoticed until the middle of the nineteenth
century; but a reason for this has been already sug-
gested. On poor Paterson this affair appears to
have pressed along with his other troubles; and he
speaks with all the true pathos of simple sincerity
about the condition to which personal disease, the

136 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

misfortunes of his friends, and his own baffled
hopes, had conspired to sink him:

" About the 5th of June, I was taken very ill of
a fever; but trouble of mind, as I found afterwards,
was none of the least causes thereof. By the 9th
or 10th of June, all the councillors and most of the
officers, with their baggage, were on board the seve-
ral ships, and I left alone on shore in a weak con-
dition. None visited me except Captain Thomas
Drummond, who, with me, still lamented our
thoughts of leaving the place, and praying God
that we might but hear from our country before
we left the coast; but others were in so great haste,
that all the guns in the fort, at least those belong-
ing to the St. Andrew, had been left behind but for
the care and vigilance of Captain Thomas Drum-
mond.

" In my sickness, besides the general concern of
my spirits, I was much troubled by a report spread
abroad of Captain Pennicook as designing to run
away with the ship, on pretence that we were pro-
claimed pirrots (pirates), and should be all hanged
when we came home — or, at least, the company
would never pay the seamen their wages."

It was in the latter end of the month of June
that the shattered remnant of the colony left their

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 137

forts and huts. The heads of the company at
home, who had heard little but exulting news from
the expedition, were in the mean time fitting out
a reinforcement. The vessels were just about to
depart from the west coast of Scotland, when the
directors received through private and circuitous
sources indirect mutterings, which gradually grew
into distinct announcements of some terrible cala-
mity having swept their original colony from the
spot on which they were supposed to be lengthen-
ing their ropes and strengthening their stakes. But
while they were yet unauthenticated, the new ex-
pedition were warned not to believe in these idle
rumours. The directors thus address them when
wavering on departure (22nd September, 1699):
" We are advised of a story made and propagate in
England, viz., that the Scots have deserted their
colony of Caledonia for fear of the Spaniards at Car-
tagena, an enemy that take much tyme before they
be ready to make any attack, and of whom we never
heard that our people were afrayd. The story is
altogether malicious and. false, and is contrived on
purpose to discourage people to go to our colony
with provisions, &c., since they find their proclama-
tions in the West Indies, and all their other me*
thods against, has not had the designed effect."
But when the rumour was confirmed, and the new

138 THE DAEIEN EXPEDITION

expedition had sailed, they had to send after it
despatches of a different character, — which yet, in
the admission of disaster, bore a tone of high resolu-
tion and proud defiance, — instructing them, should
the fort be in possession of enemies, immediately to
besiege it and attempt its recovery. This second
detachment came, however, to a more rapidly fatal
termination than the first. The solitude and silence,
where they expected to find a busy, prosperous
colony, sent an immediate chill to their hearts, with
which they were unable to combat. Illness and
mortality attacked them; their best vessel was
burned, and speedily they resolved to depart from
the scene of disaster; all, save eight, who bravely
determined to cast their lot with a third detach-
ment, whom they believed to be then in the
Atlantic.

This last body was of a thorougly warlike cha-
racter, for it was fitted up after the news of Spanish,
French, and even English hostility to the project
had reached Scotland. The commissions granted
to the commanders of the vessels had an evident
reference to the probability of hostile encounters
with English vessels. They were in these defying
terms:

" You are hereby ordered not to suffer, so far as
you are able, the said company's ship under your

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 139

command to be insulted during the voyage by the
ships of war of any nation, nor to search your said
ship, nor suffer your men to be pressed on any pre-
tence whatsoever. But by force of arms, if need
be, you are to defend your trade and navigation
pursuant to the powers and privileges granted to our
company by the act of parliament herewith de-
livered unto you. Nor are you to have regard to
any order which the commanders of any ships of
war or others may happen to pretend for searching,
pressing, or detaining, as aforesaid, unless the same
be signed by the king, and countersigned either by
the king, or his secretary of state for the kingdom
of Scotland, — for doing whereof this shall be to you
a sufficient warrant."

This third detachment appears to have started in
ignorance of even the first desertion of the colony.
They were prepared to see the original settlement
flourishing and augmented. What they found may
be told in the words of one of their chaplains:

"Upon our arrival in this new world we met
with a sorrowful and crushing-like dispensation, for,
expecting here to meet with our friend* and coun-
trymen, we found nothing but a waste, howling
wilderness — the colony deserted and gone — their
huts all burned— their fort most part ruined — the
ground which they had cleared adjoining to the

140 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

fort all overgrown -with shrubs and weeds. We
looked for peace, but we found war; and for a
time of health and comfort, but behold trouble.
Our arrival at this place was much like David's
coming with his little army to Ziklag of old, where,
expecting to meet with their friends and relations
in peace, they found the town burnt and laid
waste, their relations all gone they knew not
whither, so that the people lift up their voice and
wept sore. Our disappointment was like theirs in
Job vi., 19, 20: "The troops of Tema looked,
the companies of Sheba waited for them. They
were confounded because they had hoped; they came
thither, and were ashamed." It was, therefore, no
wonder that our people were sadly discouraged upon
their coming thither, and the rather because they
were ill-fitted and furnished to begin a new planta-
tion, and had not materials suitable to such a design,
which they expected to find here before them. Our
party were not sent forth to settle a colony, but only
to be a recruit and supply to a colony which we
expected in some measure already settled, and
sufficiently furnished with tools and instruments
for such a design."*

The reverend gentleman who thus writes was

* The History of Darien, by the Rev. Francis Borland, p. 30.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. . 141

sent, with others, by the Church of Scotland, to
take the spiritual command of the new empire.
They received a pretty broad commission " to take
charge of the souls of the colony, and to erect a
presbytery, with a moderator, clerk, and record of
proceedings, to appoint ruling elders, deacons, over-
seers of the manners of the people, and assistants in
the exercise of Church discipline and government,
and to hold regular kirk sessions." According to
Sir John Dalrymple, the clergymen endeavoured to
stretch their discipline very far. He says — what,
however, we have not seen any earlier authority for
— that " they exhausted the spirits of the people,
by requiring their attendance at sermon four or five
hours at a stretch, relieving each other by preaching
alternately, but allowing no relief to their hearers.
The employment of one of the days set aside for
religious exercise, which was a Wednesday, they
divided into three parts — thanksgiving, humiliation,
and supplication, in which three ministers followed
each other. And as the service of the Church of
Scotland consists of a lecture with a comment, a
sermon, two prayers, three psalms, and a blessing,
the work of that day, upon an average of the length
of the service of that age, could not take up less
than twelve hours, during which space of time the
colony was collected, and kept close together in the

142 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

guard-room, which was used as a church, in a
tropical climate, and in a sickly season."*

These clergymen appear to have been influenced
by a very honest and sincere zeal, but, far from being
able to make a presbytery with its kirk services,
they got no better accommodation than the cabins ,
in which they had sailed; and Mr. Borland almost
poetically says, " When the ministers here did meet,
it was ordinarily in the dark and silent woods —
inter densas urnbrosa cacumina sylvasj — where, I
suppose, such guests and exercises never had been
before." The rev. gentleman indeed appears to
have seriously lost his temper under the slights and
hardships which he endured. The absence of any
great predominant power at sea, such as Britain now
wields, made almost all the colonists and distant
traders of thtft day lax, rough-handed, and unscrupu-
lous. Yet let us hope that the rev. gentleman's
account of his fellow-colonists must be at least as
great an exaggeration as Sir John Dalrymple's ac-
cusation of clerical domination. " The source, 1 ' he
says, " and fountain, and cause of all our miseries,
we brought from our own country with us, arising
from the inconsiderate choice that was made there

* Dabymple's Memoirs, iL, 99.

t Sylvas should hefagos. The quotation is from the Eclogue
to Alexis—an odd one for a clergyman to cite.

AND CAPTAIN GREEK. 143

of the worst of men to go along with us, that ever
were sent to command or serve in a colony, which,
in the judgment of God, our land hath spewed forth
as its scum; and no spot on God's earth can retain
or receive, but as a burthen to it." And he and
his brethren, reporting to their constituents in
Scotland, summed up the iniquities of the spot
in these forcible words: "There have abounded,
and do still remain among us, such abominations
as the rudest heathens, from the light of nature,
do abhor; such as atheistical swearing and curs-
ing, brutish drunkenness, detestable lying and
prevaricating, obscene and filthy talking, mock-
ing of godliness ; yea, and among too many of
the meaner sort, base thieving and pilfering,
besides Sabbath-breaking, contempt of all Gospel
ordinances, &c, which are stumbling to the very
Indians, opprobrious to the Christian name, and
reproachful to the Church and nation to which we
belong."*

It would be uncandid to represent this as an
unsupported condemnation by the clerical ministers
of the colony. Four of the council, reporting to the
directors at home, complain of some of their ser-
vants who have " proven knaves;" and this prompts
ihem to say : " We are vexed beyond measure with
hearing, judging, and punishing them and other
• DabympteiiL, 100.

144 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

rascals, of which kind there was never so great a
collection among so few men." But, in truth, they
were all disappointed and desperate — they had gone
where all example was that of the buccaneer and
pirate; their own country's government could not
protect them — the hands of all others were against
them. They were driven into ruffianism; and an
attempt made by some of the sailors to seize one of
the vessels and make off with it, was but a natural re-
sult of the chaotic and helpless condition of this poor
colony from the beginning. Everything was again
involved in miserable and palpable mismanagement.
" Whereas/' says one of the reports, " there were
ample accounts given of the natives being at war
with the Spaniards, and that they were our fast
friends, we find two of their captains, viz., Pedro
and Augustine, with silver-headed staves as Spanish
captains, willing, notwithstanding, to go with us and
plunder the Spaniards, as, no doubts they would do
us, if the Spaniards would help them." And, in
another report, with many complaints of embezzle-
ments and dishonesties, they thus speak of their
commercial position with a kind of ludicrous help-
lessness: "We cannot conceive for what end so
much thin grey paper and so many little blue bon-
nets were sent here, being utterly useless, and not
worth their room in a ship. It cannot be unknown
to your honours .that we have not 50/. sterling of

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 145

vendible goods belonging to the company, and
therefore our relief — if we get any — must come from
Scotland, either in provisions, or credit which can
be effectual, ere we starve for want." The directors
at home, however, still talked big; and there is
something sadly ridiculous in the antithetic tone of
the communications which crossed each other, and
now lie side by side in the old press. " Amongst
many others," the directors say, " there was one
particular error which the old council was guilty of,
namely, their coming away in the manner they did,
without ever calling a parliament or a general meet-
ing of the colony, or consulting their inclinations in
the least: but commanding them to a blind and
implicit obedience, which is more than they can ever
be able to answer for. Wherefore we desire you
would constitute a parliament, whose advice you are
to take in important matters; and, in the mean time,
you are to acquaint the officers and planters with
the constitutions, and with the few additional ones
sent by Mr. Mackay ; and that all and every person
in the colony may know their duty, advantages,
and privileges; and to the end that God may give
you a blessing to all your endeavours, we earnestly
press and recommend it to you, that you study all
reasonable measures to discountenance and suppress
all manner of riots and immoralities; but especially

VOL. I. L

146 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

that you encourage virtue and discourage vice, by
the example of your own lives; and give all the
necessary assistance to your ministers, in establishing
discipline and good order among your people. 9

Alas, poor fellows, instead of offering an example
in their own lives on this high scale, they were but
seeking to preserve their lives; and while their con-
stituents talked largely of a parliament, they were
thinking where they would get food. Yet one
gleam of heroic sunshine flashed over the dreary
struggle of this third body of emigrants. An ex-
perienced and daring soldier, Campbell of Einab,
was sent over as their military leader. He brought
them in contact with the Spaniards ; and, discouraged
and broken as they were, they fought with the old
fierce determination of their race, and were vic-
torious. Through some almost accidental means, an
account of this affair reached Scotland separately
from the disastrous history which followed it; and
none of the great British victories of the last Euro-
pean war excited so hearty a fit of national rejoicing
as this minute skirmish called forth throughout the
nation. Arnot, the local historian of Edinburgh,
says that, " Upon the news being received of the
defeat of the Spaniards, a mob arose, obliged the
inhabitants to illuminate their windows, committed
outrages upon the houses of those who did not

AND CAPTAIN GKEEft. 147

honour them by compliance, secured the avenues to
the city, and proceeded to the tolbooth, the doors
of which they burnt, and set at liberty two printers,
who had been confined for printing pamphlets re-
flecting on the government"*

But this gleam of success was brief indeed. A
Spanish force, so powerful as to render resistance
preposterous, invested the colony by sea and land,
and, with resignation to their fete, the haughty Scots
had to capitulate.

It was the fate of the company ever to make
efforts at the wrong time. When the capitulation
was signed, a reinforcing expedition — the fourth in
number — was on its way out, full of hope and am-
bition. One of those who had gone with the first
expedition accompanied this as supercargo. He
preserved a diary of the voyage, in which, after
Borne ordinary perils and uncertainties, we find him
-thus describing his arrival at his place of destination :

" We made Golden Island of a truth, and all its
marks were known plainly to me. We then sent
away our boat, and I wrote two letters along with
it; one to the council of the colony, showing them
where we were, and from whence, and desiring a
pilot to conduct us in. I wrote another to Captain
Andrew Stewart, the Earl of Galloway's brother.
* History of Edinburgh, p. 185.
L2

148 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

By the time we judged our men had got in we
heard two cannon from the fort. We fired one, and
they another, as we supposed in return. We then
no longer doubted but our countrymen were there,
and so set out our boat to tow us in, for it had been,
calm some more than an hour before; otherwise I
am persuaded we had gone in, and the Lord knows
what might have been the event. * * * But
before we could come near the black rock, or in
sight of the garrison, we saw our boat returning,
yet dreaded nothing of the fatal news they brought
us. On the contrary, we were big with the fancy
of seeing our countrymen in general in quiet pos-
session, of the place, and especially some of us were
full of the expectation of seeing our dear friends,
comrades, and acquaintances. In short, there was
nothing but a general mirth and jollity amongst us.
But, alas, it was soon damped when our boat came
aboard, giving us the lamentable and dismal account
of the Spanish ensigns on our fort, with that nation
in possession thereof; and that the guns we had
imagined fired by our countrymen in token of glad*
ness at our arrival, were, by the Spaniards, shot at
our boat when she was making her escape from
them, after having discovered who they were, both
by their ensigns and speech, having answered them
in Spanish to what they demanded of them. When

A3D CAPTAIN GREEN. 149

our men rowed close to their fort, not doubting but
they were our friends till such time as they came to
discover so many different sorts of liveries, as red,
blue, grey, and yellow; — then beginning to doubt,
considering their ensigns, they lay off upon their
oars, and our chief mate, James Knight, asked in
English to whom that place belonged, and all that
he could understand of their answer was venica
fruannaj* which signifies, " come here, good man."
Then our men began to put off, which they no
sooner see but they begun to fire, which were the
shots before mentioned."

The narrator — a certain Captain Patrick Mac-
dowall — determined to approach with a boat and
test the accuracy of this information. He saw on
his approach the Spanish colours pulled down, but
no response was made to his own flag of truce, nor
could he extract from them anything to break an
obdurate and suspicious silence, under which he
rowed back to his vessel, making the following note
of what he observed :

44 While we lay closest to the fort, I made it my
business to observe the posture of things ashore as
narrowly as possibly. I observed a great part of the
rampart intire towards the look-out, and perfectly
our postern gate. I observed several very good
houses, and a fort where Mr. Mackay's house stood.

• Sic in MS.

150 THE DAHIKtf EXPEDITION

I saw some guns on the point battery; but how
many I could not well distinguish. I observed the
men in vast numbers and their several liveries
Where their look-out can be I cannot tell, bat there
is no watchhouse where ours stood." Such was the
last glimpse which the adventurers obtained of their
El Dorado — the mart that was to conjoin the trade
of the Pacific and Atlantic — the land of delicious
fruit and turtles— of spices and gorgeous dyes— of
silver and gold.

It is now time to turn to the national storm which
was brewing in Scotland. The feeling of indigna-
tion against England was almost nationally unani-
mous. The rich felt it both in their mortified
pride and their lost fortunes; and the humbler
classes, down to the lowest street-rabble of Glasgow
and Edinburgh, joined in the general shout, that
the nation had been sacrificed to the greed of the
English traders and the ambition of the revolution
monarch. Every calamity — whether caused by
elemental disturbance or the folly and vacillation of
the inexperienced speculators — swelled the tide of
wrath; and the Jacobites saw a reactionary force
gathering against the revolution too naturally strong
to need their aid. It was better that they should
merely look on. The records of parliament and
the privy council show traces of deep perplexity in
those official persons who had sworn to serve the

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 151

king, yet could not be the true ministers of hia
wishes without something like national treachery.
On the 17th of January, 1701, a long series of
resolutions of the Scottish parliament was embodied
in an address to the king, in which the proceed-
ings of the company were pronounced lawful and
justifiable; the proclamations against them by the
governors of English colonies were denounced; and
it was declared that the proceedings of the English
parliament on the subject were " an undue inter-
meddling in the afiairs of this kingdom, and an in-
vasion upon the sovereignty and independence of
our king and parliament." Some of the more
violent spirits wished to add a clause, that the
advisers of the proceedings in the English parlia-
ment and of the proclamations " have done what
in them lay to create jealousies and animosities be-
twixt the two kingdoms — and, if subjects of this
kingdom, are traitors to the king and country — and,
when discovered, ought to be prosecute accord-
ingly;" but this clause was withdrawn. A more
formidable proposal, that instead of an address to
the king, which he might answer as he saw fit, its
terms should be embodied in an act of parliament,
came to a division, but was lost by 108 to 84. The
minority became popular heroes; and a caricaturist
so offensively represented the majority, that a state

152 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

prosecution was attempted; but the jury would not
convict him.

In the mean time, the death of the Princess
Anne's last child suggested that act of security,
which was afterwards passed to the consternation of
English statesmen. It settled the succession of the
crown, on the principle that he who was monarch
of England should be disqualified by that fact to
succeed to the crown of Scotland, until the national
grievances were redressed. After the fashion of the
English parliament, war was made on pamphleteers
obnoxious to the prevailing party. A surgeon
named Walter Harris had favoured the king's
side of the question in a pamphlet called "A
Defence of the Scots Abdicating Darien." This
the parliament directed to be burned by the com-
mon hangman as " a blasphemous, scandalous, and
calumnious libel;" and a reward of six thousand
pounds in Scots money was offered for his apprer
hension. The Scottish secretary of state had to issue
a proclamation in the king's name to apprehend
and prosecute the man who had vindicated the king;
and the printed placard to that effect may yet be
seen. In the fierce debates which attended these
proceedings, the lord commissioner — the representa-
tive of majesty — was sore perplexed, and literally
wist not what to do. The minutes of the parlia-

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 153

merit of the 13th of June, for instance, contain an
adjournment by him thus prefaced : " I am troubled
with such a cold and hoarseness, that not being able
to speak much, nor in a condition to stay any time
here, I shall therefore only tell you that, as I was
ever firm and faithful to my king, so I was ever
zealous for the honour and interest of my country;
and at this time I hoped to have done acceptable
service to both."

The Dutch monarch met the storm with his
usual imperturbable firmness both of nerve and
temper. But there were feelings and principles
actuating the Scottish nation which could not but
meet with respect by one who had fought like him
against arbitrary power. The historians of the period
have preserved an anecdote about the many addresses
from all quarters which were poured in upon the
monarch. One was to be presented by an enthu-:
siastic young nobleman, Lord Basil Hamilton. The
king refused him access.* Lord Basil took an
opportunity, as the king was leaving the place of
audience, to stop him and present the address with
some sharp comments. " That young man is too
bold," said William; but then his sympathy with a
gallant spirit triumphing, he continued — " if a man

• This part of the anecdote is confirmed by a letter of the
king, recorded in the Minutes of the Scottish Privy Council.

154 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

can be too bold in the cause of his country. " Wit-
Ham, in fact, showed, even in the reserve of his com-
munications to the Scottish privy council and par-
liament, a real sympathy with the nation and its
calamities. He coupled these expressions with
some vague desires " to grant what may be needful
for the relief and care of the kingdom, and the
advancement and welfare of all its concerns." Doubt-
less in his busy brain he was endeavouring to re-
concile justice to the Scots with the necessary de-
ference to the interested prejudices of the English
merchants, and the strength of his game in Euro-
pean politics, when his active life was terminated
by a fall from a horse, at an age eight years less
than that reached by a British statesman of late
times, whose death, occasioned by the same form of
accident, was lamented as cutting off many years of
valuable existence.

With the accession of Queen Anne came a move-
ment towards a legislative union of the kingdoms.
This promised a final settlement of all difficulties^
but it was in itself so difficult an object to accom-
plish, that the events which we are going to narrate,
driving the dispute to a more fierce and critical
juncture, seem to have been absolutely necessary to
the result, which has conferred on Britain so great
and lasting a blessing. In 1703 a Jacobite plot was

AHD CAFTADT GREEK. • 155

discovered. It raised indignant remarks in. the
English parliament These in their turn were
treated by the Scottish parliament as an act of
national aggression. The Act of Security was
brought in and passed, and the supplies were sus-
pended until it should receive the royal assent*
This assent was refused through the influence of the
English statesmen on the queen. It was repassed
by the Scottish parliament, where Fletcher and
others began to teach the formidable doctrine that
the royal assent was a mere matter of form not
necessary to the validity of the acts passed by the
Scottish parliament. The act at last (1 704) received
the royal assent, and thus it was decreed that on the
queen's death the two crowns of Scotland and.
England should descend to different heirs unless
such concessions were made as should satisfy the
Scots.

In the mean time, the English trading corpora-
tions, actuated by the spirit of commercial jealousy,
did some things which justified in its most offensive
form the complaint of the Scots, that England would
neither permit them to make separate trading alli-
ances, nor to participate in hex own colonial com-
merce.

It was among the projects of the Scottish com-
pany to trade with India, where they encountered

156 • THE DAEIEN EXPEDITION

in rivalship that great corporation [which was des-
tined to fill so large a place in the world's history.
India was not yet, however, an English possession,
nor was it a country at war with England; so that
there were no diplomatic grounds on which an inde-
pendent state like Scotland, in alliance with Eng-
land, could be driven out of that trade. The Darien
company, however, got a vessel, called the Annan-
dale, fitted up in England for the India trade,
employing an English commander and some English
sailors. It appears to have been their intention to
proceed straight to India, but seeing that this would
be a direct infringement of the privileges of the
East India Company, the vessel was, in the first
place, cleared for Scotland. The Scottish company
had the misfortune to quarrel with their commander,
Ap Rice, who supplied the English company with
information to suit their purposes. While the vessel
was in the Downs, she was boarded by custom-house
officers, aided by the armed crew of a man-of-war.
The vessel was taken possession of, and the cargo,
including, according to the statement of the Scots
company, certain chests of treasure, seized, and put
under guard. The supercargo said, that when he
showed the queen's commission as Queen of Scot-
land, to the tide surveyor in command of the in-
vaders, " he said that he valued it not a pin, for

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 157

that he had the English East India Company's war-
rant to indemnify him, and that they had a long
purse to defend themselves in Westminster Hall."
The Scottish ministers of course interceded for
restitution ; but this was only one of many instances
in that reign, where English law was too strong to
be modified by any such diplomatic expediency as
might have suggested the propriety of avoiding, at
that time, acts calculated to increase the irritation of
the Scots. After a tedious litigation, in which there
were nine counsel employed by the English, and
eight by the Scottish company, the ship Annandak
and her cargo were forfeited by the Court of Ex-
chequer, under the statutes in favour of the East
India Company.

It so chanced that at this juncture, a vessel called
the Worcester, attacked by foul weather near the
east coast of Scotland, ran into the Frith of Forth,
and cast anchor in the harbour of Burnt Island,
right opposite to Edinburgh. While mens' minds
were full of the national insult offered to the coun-
try in the condemnation of the Annandak, it was
whispered that the Worcester belonged to that very
East India Company at whose instance the Scottish
vessel had been condemned; and, as the rumour
grew, people exulted in the retributive providence
that had sent that vessel to the very spot where it

158 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

could be made the instrument of avenging the
national wrongs of Scotland. It may be mentioned
that the Worcester does not appear to have belonged
to the old East India Company, at whose instance the
Annandale was condemned, but to have been rather
connected with its new rival, called the Two Mil-
lion Company; "but the distinction was one easily
obliterated by those who addressed a people burning
with patriotic indignation.

It is angular that an event of so much importance
in British history as the seizure of this ship— of so
much importance, once it was the crisis which
rendered the union necessary— should have been so
little noticed by historians. It is stated in all the
histories of the period that the vessel was seized by
the Scottish government; but it has now to be shown
how the official staff of the Darien Company per-
formed that service. In a corner of the oaken press
containing the books and documents of the company,
the writer of this account ibund a crumpled, un-
seated series of letters, seemingly huddled together
as useless papers. He was tempted to employ some
leisure hours in unfolding diem, and was pretty well
rewarded, since, along with many documents of little
interest, he found among them a series of letters from
Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, secretary of the company,
containing an account of the manner in winch he

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 159

Based and kept possession of the ship. This story
is a little Tomance in itself, the more active portion
of which, at least, had better be told in his own
"words. Among these documents there is a warrant
by the court of directors, authorising Mackenzie to
take measures for seizing the vessel by force of arms
if seed be, " in name, and for the use of, the said
Scots company; not only for having, contrary to
the rights and privileges of the said Scots company,
without their license and authority, imported and
clandestinely sold East India goods into this king-
dom, but likewise upon account of reprisal, as be-
longing to the English East India Company."

In a long letter addressed to the directors, Mr.
Mackenzie gives an account of the manner in which
he fulfilled his commission. It is dated 2nd Sep
tember, 1704, but the seizure took place on the 12th
of August. The first part of the letter contains many
reflections, and some observations on the nature of
the duty he had undertaken. All these we may
pass over, and come at once to the scene of action:

"The chief and almost only difficulty that re-
mained with me was how, with secrecy and despatch,
to get together a sufficient number of such genteel
pretty fellows as would, of their own free accord, on
a sudden advertisement, be willing to accompany me
upon this adventure, and whose dress and behaviour

160 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

would not render them suspected of any uncommon
design in going aboard; nor had I a power to com-
pel any man.

" For this end, the day happening luckily enough
to be Saturday (the general holy-day or rather play-
day in this place), I stept immediately towards the
City Cross, with the most unconcerned air thatlcould
put on, and ask't such of my acquaintance as I met,
and thought fitt for my purpose, whether they would
not go and take a Saturday's dinner somewhere in
the countrey, with me and and a friend or two of
mine ? I made use of the same general topick to all
of them, for distinguishing such as were not then
engaged about any particular business; and to these
only I addressed myself further, with more or less
freedom, according as I found their several pulses
beat.

" I shall not trouble you with a recital of all the
diverting humours that I observed in ingaging such
as I thought fitt persons to bear a part in our little
adventure; but, in short (without naming of names),
some persons to whom I had cautiously enough
drop't my mind, and who had condescended to go
along, gave me the slip at Edinburgh, and others
did the like after they had gone as far as Leith and
Newhaven. Yet, after all, there remained with me
still eleven persons, who, tho' most of them be as

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 161

good gentlemen and (I must own) much prettier
fellows than I pretend to be, yet, through mere com*
meradship to myself, and love to the design they saw
me ingaged in, they not only frankly and freely con-
descended to bear a share in my fate that day, but
likewise, seeing I was the only person directly com-
missioned by our company, they generously subj ected
themselves to my conduct and directions, as im-
plicitly as if they had belonged to some disciplined
troop under my command; for which cause, and for
their subsequent behaviour, I question not but that
my constituents will, in due time, enable and impower
me, in their names, to make these gentlemen some ac-
knowledgment suitable to the merit of their services.
" My eleven companions and I, having soon con-
certed measures, and being all of us armed with
swords, pocket pistols, and some with bayonets too,
three of them and myself and servant only, went first
of all aboard, with the very first of the evening tide,
in a boat from Leith, taking along with us some wine,
brandy, sugar, lime-juice, &c, to pave the way for
those that should come after us; four more followed
some time thereafter, in a boat from Newhaven ; and
while I was tongue-pading and entertaining the ship-*
officers with a hearty bowle in the cabin, my friends
got aboard unsuspected; the third boat, with the last
four of our friends, made a faint towards the man-

VOL. I. M

162 THE DARIBN EXPEDITION

of- war that lay then in the rdad t and calling for the
captain (whom they knew to have been ftshoar)j
made some pretence to go aboard out of curiosity, to
view the ship j and) in a short time thereafter* eame
from the man-of-war towards the East India ship*
By this tiznfe we were all vtery busy aboard) sonid
drinking and others merchandising, till these who
were in the third boat got likewise easily aboard un»
suspected. We seemed to be Very little Acquainted
with them, till that the boatswain* happening to
complain that they had but little room and small
conveniency aboard for entertaining persons of
quality, and that several gentlemen were drinking
between decks, I took occasion to say that Z believed
we had taken up tod muoh of their room, and de-
sired him, therefore) cause make ready our boat)
that we might give way to others by turns; which
the boatswain and other officers Would not hear of,
but said I was heartily Welcome to stay as long as I
pleased j I told them, since the incommoding of their
friends was occasioned by our possessing the cabin,
the least reparation we ought to make Was to invite
them and their friends to partake of our bowle,
especially seing we had more liquor than we could
well drink during the short time that we were to
stay on board; whereupon, with abundance of
thanks, ceremony, and complement) they introduced

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 163

into oar company our own friends under the notion
of thein.

u We projected likewise to ourselves, for the
greater security, to have got one of the best ferry*
boats of Burntisland well manned, with design to
have her lying off at some distance, till we had
given some signal from the ship to clap us imme-
diately aboard; and we who had got first aboard,
should in the mean time give such diversion, one way
or other, to the ship's crew, as might disable them
from firing any great gunns at the boat But the
shortness of time to which I found myself limited,
could not possibly admitt of any such formal pre-
paration, so that we who were got aboard, being
fairly without suspicion, joined together in manner
foresaid; what then remained only to be thought of
was to put our design in execution the best way we
could, since we were to expect no other help.

" I saw that (small and great) there were about
double our number on board, so that before we
could attempt anything, it was absolutely necessary
to decoy all the officers into the cabin, thereby to
render the common sailers headless without com-
mand, which at last we got done by lulling all the
crew into a full security, with drinking, singing, &c.

* At my first coming on board, I took (as it were)
out of cariosity a survey of the ship's condition,
m2

164 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

and would needs see what conveniences they had
got between decks, in the gun-room and forecastle,
&c. Some of my companions were now and then
for an amusement stepping out upon deck, and we
agreed upon a watchword, when we should plant
ourselves thus: two to guard the gun-room door,
two on the main-deck, by the forecastle, two on
the quarter-deck, and the other five with myself in
the cabin. And really were you to be entertained
with all the several humours and little pleasant in*
terludes that happened before, at, and after the
time of our going on board, till the end of the show
(besides their mistaking me, forsooth, for some
lord, and their treating me as such, and my taking
upon me accordingly), I am persuaded you'd think
the whole a most compleat scene of a comedy, acted
to the life; and to conclude the story, I may say,
the ship was at last taken with a Scot's song.

u It's true the carpenter and some others of the
crew attempted to give us a pretty rugged chorus,
by laying hands on some brass blunderbushes that
hung ready charged in the cabin, but they were
quickly made to lose their holds, and about nine
a clock at night we became absolute masters of
both ship and crew, without any bloodshed on either
side. We immediately turned most of all the ordinary
sailors ashoar, and after securing all the small arms,

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 165

I sealed the hatches, gun-room, lazaretta, chests,
cabinets and other keepings, with our company's seal,
in presence of two of the queen's waiters, the boat-
swain, gunner, carpenter, Stewart, gunner's mate,
and others of the crew:, whom I keep still on board
as witnesses to all that has been, or shall be acted,
till the event of the cause in debate.

" After having sealed and secured the hatches, and
other keeping, as aforesaid, I despatched an express
to our court of directors to give them an account of
our success, which you may easily believe was very
agreeable news to all of them.

" I sent likewise by the same occasion a line to a
skipper of my acquaintance in Leith to come aboard
the next day, and bring twenty or thirty able trusty
sailers along with him, which he did accordingly on
Sunday, towards the evening, and upon -Monday
we weighed anchors, but wanting wind to fill our
sails, we towed the ship with oared boats into Brun-
tisland harbour, where she lies now, without sail or
rudder, as secure as a thief in a mill.

" We have likewise landed eight of the ship's guns,
and planted them upon a fort that commands the
entry into the harbour, hired a gunner, and a com-
petent number of stout pretty fellows to keep guard
there both night and day to prevent our being sur-
prized by any that may have a counter design upon

166 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

us till we get the ship condemned and unloaded by a
judicial sentence; an account of all which proceed-
ings being reported at large to our court of directors,
on the twenty-fourth, and to the council general of
our company on the twenty-sixth of the last month
(where a considerable number of our ohief nobility,
barons, burgesses, and members of parliament were
present), they all, to my great satisfaction, approved
the same, nemine contradicente, and a process is now
commenced in my name, as our company's factor,
for obtaining a decreet of reprizal before the high
court of admirality for condemning the ship Wor-
cester and her cargo, to make good the dammages
sustained by our company upon account of the ship
Annandale.

" Our lybel is founded likewise on two separate
grounds,* vist., their importing and vending East
India goods here, without any licence or permission
from our company, and their having on board the
tipe, or counterfeit of our company's seal.

" I have been some days ago over at Bruntisland
searohing the captain's cabinet, chest, and writing-
desk, by the judge admiral's warrant, with a macer
of court, and two publick notaries in company,
besides the magistrate of the place, and several other
witnesses then present; and by the transient view
wjiich I have already had of the captain's books

AND CAPTAIN GBKEV. 167

And papers, and by some very odd expressions dropt
now and then from some of the ship's crew, I have
reason to suspect him as guilty of some very un-
warrantable practices.

" It is now so late that I cannot enlarge on the
particular remarks that I have made on some pas-
sages of the papers; but with my first oonvenienoy
I shall inform you from time to time of all the
material occurrences relating to any part of this
whole aflkir; and the return which I expect from
you, is a frequent account of what you hear the
English East India Company, and the immediate
owners and freighters of this ship, are doing, or shall
do upon this occasion.' 1

Thus was carried out a scheme of great audacity
—one such as probably never man proceeded on
from the three-legged stool of a joint-stock company's
office. The risk run by Mackenzie and those who
aided him was imminent, not only in the unequal
contest of his small civic force with a vastly pre-
ponderant body of hardy seamen, but in the certain
wrath of the English government, and the question-
able support of his own. And though the whole
narrative has an air of gross treachery, yet, if it be
looked upon not as a private transaction, but a na-
tional operation, it will bear comparison with the
old-established British system of a seizure of foreign

168 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

vessels as the first announcement of war. The letters
sent day by day from Mackenzie to his consti-
tuents, show his sense of responsibility and his keen
anxiety; but they deal too much with small details
to admit of being here quoted at length. His new
duties, as commander of a captured vessel, naturally
taxed the capacity of the joint-stock secretary ; and his
earliest desire, " Pray order some of your servants to
acquaint my wife where I am," naturally recals to us
the astonishment of the secretary's wife, on finding
that the husband for whom she had been waiting
dinner had become a naval commander. " The ship,
I believe," he says to his constituents, " is the foul-
lest in the narrow seas. There is a discreet man —
one Skipper Hodge, a pilot, from Frasersburgh, on
board. I have his advice quietly; and by both his
and Skipper Mills' joint advice, we design (God
willing), to-morrow early, to endeavour to get her
into Bruntisland harbour, which they seem doubtful
of performing if it be not fair weather, because she
will not answer her rudder, her rudder being pro-
digiously overgrown with oysters, muscles, &c."
Having got over his many difficulties, he next says:
" This is to inform your honors further, that (thanks
be to God) I am here now well arrived, with my
masters' prize, in better condition and much sooner
than was expected by any on board except myself.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 169

We are got safe within the heads, but can get no
further up the harbour (it being exactly nip-tide)
till to-morrow or next day. I design to cause carry
here sails ashoar to-morrow morning, for the greater
security. I know there are little plots hatching
against me as to my present charge, but I hope I
shall be aware of them. The truth is, I cannot say
I have sleept (yea, scarcely slumbered) two hours
since Friday night; nor can I allow myself much
ease that way till my masters' prize be as much out
of harm's way as I can reasonably project.

"Here I am stopt by the arrival of Newton
Drummond's son, with your honors' acceptable
line, the contents of which I hope I have, in a great
measure, already executed. While I have so weighty
a charge in my hands, nothing shall be more ac-
ceptable to me than the frequency of orders and
letters from, at least, some of your number, for my
government and direction in the discharge of my
duty.

" I have made use of many hands, which I pro-
cured with no small industry and difficulty; having
scarce any one hand one whole day on board, but
am forced to shift and change the best way I can,
most of them at least pretending to be concerned
in several ships that are going under Capt. Gordon's
convoy, or bound by charte* party on coasting voy-
age*"

170 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

Proceedings were immediately commenced in the
High Court of Admiralty, for condemning the vessel
as lawful prize by reprisal. The lord chancellor
brought the matter under the notice of the Scottish
privy council ; and there is a minute of that body,
of 5th September, finding that the ship, M not being
■eieed by any warrant or authority from the govern-
ment," but by the company, 4< in prosecution of
their own proper rights, and of the acts of parlia-
ment made and conceived in their favour," it was
not for the council to Interfere with the question, as
it lay with the Oourt of Admiralty.*

But in the mean time the position of the eaptive
vessel and her crew began to assume a more dark
and mysterious aspect. One of the vessels belonging
to the Darien Company, called the Speedy Return,
having one of their most conspicuous officers, Cap-
tain Drummond, as supercargo, had been missing
for three years, and indistinct rumours had reached
Scotland of the ship having been taken and the
crew murdered by pirates. The crew of the
Worcester were men of a suspicuous aspect — *• pro-
fligate in their lives and conversation — who occa-
sionally, as Mr. Mackenzie's narrative has shown,

♦ Minutes of the Scottish privy council, in the General
Hegister House; from which the references to the privy
council in these pages are taken, where no intermediate source
is notified.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 171

dropped ominous expressions about some deed of
darkness. What if an inscrutable Providence
had in the strange turn of events delivered the
robbers and murderers of their fellow-country-
men into the hands of the avengers? How these
surmises began to assume a tangible shape in sus-
picious eyes, may best be told in some extracts from
a few loose papers, seeming to have been intended
by Mackenzie as the materials for a minute or
journal of his daily proceedings. He records the
capture of the vessel on Saturday, the 12th of
August; and his attention is first arrested by the
gunner, who expressed a fear that the capture was
only the prelude to some design upon their lives:

u On Monday thereafter, in the forenoon, about
eleven a cloak, the carpenter, Hendry Keigle, and
Andrew Robertson, the gunner's mate, happening
to discourse about their wages, Hendry Keigle was
very anxious to go ashoar; the other said he would
take his hazard; and sticking by the ship till he'd
see whether he might expect his wages or not,
whereupon Keigle said to him in passion, • Damn ye
— you never wrought so as to deserve wages out of
anything that's aboard of this ship.' The other
being calmer in his temper, answered, ' I wrought the
work that I was hyred for.' Upon which the other
flew out in a most extravagant passion, and abused

172 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

Robertson with his tongue to the last degree.
Robertson made no return; but after some tymes
pausing and walking up and down upon the main
deck, crossing his arms, and putting his hands under
his armpitts, and hanging down his head, without
addressing his discourse to any one in particular,
spoke, as near as I can remember, the very words
following (after a sigh or two): ' This is the just
judgment of God upon us all for the wickedness
that has been committed in our last voage; and I'm
afraid it will still pursue us yet further, when that
now we are reduced to so small a number aboard,
and four or five of us cannot agree amongst our-
selves/

" In a night or two thereafter, when the ship was
gott within the heads of Bruntisland harbour, and
that they were all drinking a hearty bowl of punch
in the main cabin, Mr. Mackenzie happened to dis-
course about Captain Gordon's being a scourge to
the small French privateers upon our coast, George
Hains, being pretty mellow with the punch, opened
up his breast, and to the hearing of the boatswain,
gunner, carpenter, and gunner's mate, who were then
all in the cabin (as well as several Scots gentlemen),
said, flauntingly, thus: 4 Lord God, our sloop, was
more terrible upon the coast of Malabar than ever
Captain Gordon was, or will be, to the French priva-

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 173

teers on the coast of Scotland ; for a better sailer than
that sloop never caried canvas ;' or words to that effect.

"Mr. Mackenzie finding Hains in that mood,
and walking upon the quarter-deck, being a fine
moonshine night, asked him whither in their voage
outward or inward, they had mett with, or heard
anything of, or concerning two Scots ships that
went on a trading voage beyond the Cape? Hains
asked what should they be? Mr. Mackenzie told
him they were two small ships belonging to the
Scots company; the one commanded by Captain
Drummond, and the other by Captain Steuart.
Hains said, ( Yes — we heard of them, but did no see
'em.' Mr. Mackenzie then asked what he had heard
of 'em? Hains answered, ' It's no great matter — you
need not trouble your head about 'em, for I believe
you won't see 'em in haste.' Why so, George? said
Mr. Mackenzie. Hains shifted answering for some
tyme, but Mackenzie, repeating the same question
again more earnestly, Hains said he had heard they
had turned pirrats, which was all the satisfaction he
could gett at that tyme, save only, that Hains said
he had heard one of 'em had eight guns, and the
other twelve or fourteen, if he remembred right.

" Sometyme thereafter, George Hains falling into
acquaintance with Ann Seatoun, to whom he pro-
fessed a might deal of love, and being willing to

174 THfl DABIBN EXPEDITION

ingratiat himself into her favour at any rate-
especially when he was overtaken with drink— told
her the secrets of his heart to a far greater degree
than Mr. Mackenzie* or any other of his company
oould pump out of him; and it was about that
tyme that Mrs. Wilkie and her sone went to Bruntis*
land, to enquire news about her other son, Andrew
Wilkie, who went away surgeon to Captain Drum-
mond's ship. George Hains— -his familiar discourse
with Ann Seatoun— happening to take vent so as
to come to the ears of Simpson Keigle and Robert-
son, who were then aboard, they threatened George
Hains in such manner, both that night and nixt
morning, that he could not be at peace till he gott
ashoar again to confer with his mistress. And then it
seems he prevailed with her, not only not to dis-
cover all that he had formerly told her, but lykways
to deny all that she had told to Captain Red, Cap-
tain Monro, John Turrin, Kenneth Mackenzie, and
others ; and lykways what she had further promised
to them to have discovered to Mr. Mackenzie, when
he should come over the water, he being then at
Edinburgh; and so it was, that ever thereafter,
both George Hains and Ann Seatoun were as shy
in owning anything of the premises, either to Mr.
Mackenzie or any of the aforesaid gentlemen, as if
no such thing had been ever said, — until that long '

AND CAPTAIN GBSEtf. 175

thereafter* she gave Some declaration thereof to the
committee of privy council."

The inquiry appeared to ripen by degrees, and
in the middle of the month of December, Sir Francis
Scott, the chairman of the company, writes to the
secretary, laying that the ' murder of the Drum*
monds it publicly talked of in the Streets, and that
u my lord chancellor called me this afternoon and
laid now that the matter was in everybody's talk,
he was under some obligation to call the council
and acquaint them of the business." The books of
the privy council now show a series of minutes
devoted to this subject from the 2nd January on-
wards. They appointed a committee of their num-
ber to inspect the vessel* These statesmen con-
sidered it their duty to examine everything and
report specifically, as if they had been officers of
justice searching the chamber in which a murder
. had been committed. They caused the whole cargo
to be unshipped and unpacked, and seem to have
found their real task one of considerable difficulty*
Their reports have all the particularity of invoices
attenuated by law and state-paper technicalities,
and one peruses their dreary details only to carry a
confused recollection of casks of pepper and man-
goes, bales of reeds and dye-stufls, and such like

176 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

ordinary tropical produce. Meantime the usual
judicial examinations of the crew and of those who
could afford evidence took place, and the privy
council issued instructions to the law officers of the
crown to institute proceedings against Green and
his crew for the crimes of piracy and murder.

On the 5th of March, 1705, the Court of Admi-
ralty sat to adjudicate on the indictment. It was
directed against Green himself, Madder, the chief
mate, Reynolds, the second mate, and fifteen others.
An indictment at that time began with a general
description of the crime with which the accused
was charged. It then set forth in detail, according
to the evidence which the crown expected to adduce,
the particular train of circumstances whence it was
inferred that such a crime had been so committed.
The court decided, often after lengthy pleadings,
on the " relevancy" of these specific statements to
support the general conclusion; that is to say, de-
cided whether or not, if they were proved, they would
justify the general inference, thus performing a large
portion of the functions now left to the jury. To the
unprofessional reader such a document has the advan-
tage that it furnishes him with a connected abridg-
ment of the evidence, but it makes the trial tedious
on the whole, as before the evidence is actually taken

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 177

there is generally, as we find in the record in this
case, a mass of uninteresting written pleadings on
the relevancy of the particulars.*

It is now a well-established rule through all
civilised jurisprudence, that the first step in criminal
procedure is to ascertain that a crime has been
committed, and then to find who committed it.
This is what lawyers call establishing the corpus
delicti. The opposite and dangerous rule is to ac-
cuse a person of a crime, and then discover what
crime he has committed. This was unfortunately
the ruling principle of the trial of Green. It never
was clearly established that an act of piracy had been
committed as a distinct fact, but by putting certain
circumstances together it was inferred that Green
was guilty of piracy. The very shape in which
the accusation is set forth, shows that the accusers
could not point to the specific act of piracy
which had been committed. It is thus: " The fore-
said captain, and his said crew, belonging to the
said vessel, did, upon one or other of the days of the
month of February, March, April, or May, in the
year 1703, encounter or meet with another ship or
vessel manned by its own crew upon the coast

* See the Trial of Captain Thomas Green and his Crew, in
the State Trials, xiv., 1199.

VOL. I. N

178 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

of Malabar, near Calecute; and the said vessel bear-
ing a red flag, and having English or Scotch aboard,
at least such as spoke the English language; the
said Captain Thomas Green and his crew, after some
interoommuning with them, did, without any lawful
warrant or just cause, attack the said other vessel
or ship while expecting no such treatment ; and
invading her first by their sloop which they had
manned with guns and other arms for that purpose,
they fell upon the said other vessel in an hostile
manner, by shooting of guns and otherwise, and
after some time fighting against her they overcame
and boarded the said other vessel, and having seized
their men they killed them and threw them over-
board, and then carried or caused to carry away the
goods that were aboard the said other vessel to their
said ship the Worcester, and then disposed upon the
said ship by selling her ashore on the said coast."
Here was no specification as to the vessel taken,
which might enable the accused to prove that it had
not been taken; no names of parties murdered, who
might be shown still to be alive; no ownership of
cargo, which might admit of proof that the owner's
goods had arrived safe. As Green himself is made
justly to say in the document published as his dying
speech, " We are condemned as pirates and mui>

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 179

derers on a coast far distant from this place — is there
any of you who wants either a friend whom we
have murdered, or whose goods we have taken?"

It did not make this vagueness more justifiable,
that, though not stated, a specific crime was indis-
tinctly hinted at, and in a manner calculated to
rouse effectively the prejudices of the jury. One of
the articles of evidence set forth in the indictment
was, that one of the sailors, speaking of a person who
had sailed with Captain Drummond, said that he
would never more be seen. If there was anything
to be inferred from this, it was, that Captain Drum-
mond's ship was the object of the piracy. The other
articles of evidence were chiefly those dubious ex-
pressions which Mr. Mackenzie had drunk in with
greedy awe, along with a more distinct exclamation
made by Hainefr the steward, " That it is a wonder
that since we did not sink at sea, God hath not
made the ground to swallow us up for the wicked-
ness that has been committed during the last voyage,
on board that old Bitch Bess," pointing to Captain
Green's ship. It was maintained that the goods in
the vessel were not stowed in mercantile fashion,
but were in confusion and uncovered, as if they had
been violently anfl hastily brought on board.

Such were the presumptions, which had to be
construed with the direct testimony to be shortly
n2

180 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

noticed, so that, as the indictment expresses it, " they
being joined and connected together (as a discovery
of such wickedness practised in such remote parts,
and so industriously and obstinately endeavoured
to be concealed deserves to be), the same in all the
points and circumstances thereof — at least, such and
so many of them as are relevant, and are offered to
be proven by a cumulative probation — do plainly
amount to such a plenary evidence as may fully
convince all impartial men that the aforesaid Cap-
tain Green and his said crew, are all and each of
them guilty, art and part of the foresaid crimes of
piracy, robbery, and murder."

We need not cite the tedious written pleadings,
which, with their metaphysical niceties, and abun-
dant quotations from the Corpus Juris, and such
commentators as Mathaeus, Giurba, Mascardus,
and Carpzovius, would startle the practical and
technical mind of the Central Criminal Court. We
'turn to the modicum of direct evidence, which the
indictment promises to conjoin with those elements
of suspicion, which, of course, standing alone, could
never have been offered to a jury as ostensible
grounds for a conviction. One witness only, An-
tonio Ferdinando, the cook's mate, a negro, could
speak to an actual battle. He was not very distinct
as to date or other accompaniments, but he said the

AND CAPTAIN GKEEN. 181

Worcester had a sloop with her, and that he saw
Green and the others man the sloop and attack
another vessel with an English crew. He described
the conflict in a rather confused manner, as lasting
for three days, " and upon the third day, the said
ship was boarded by those in the sloop, who, when
they came aboard, did take up those of the crew of
the said ship from under deck, killed them with
hatchets, and threw them overboard." The prize
he described as being afterwards sold on the Malabar
coast, where the capture took place, to a certain Coge
Commodo, a Portuguese receiver of pirated vessels.
Another negro, called Antonio Francisco, was held
to confirm this testimony by his statement, that, when
chained to the forecastle, he heard firing and saw
goods brought on board. The surgeon's testimony
was held to be an important corroboration of that of
the negroes. He was on shore for some weeks, when
he heard firing at sea in the direction of the Worces-
ter ■, and was told by Coge Commodo and another,
" that the Worcester had gone out and was fighting
at sea with another ship." Next day he went down
to the beach, and saw the Worcester riding with
another vessel at her stern. He found the boat
coming on shore for water, " because they had
spilt and staved all their water aboard; and that
there had been busking all night, which the witness

1 82 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

understood meant that they had been at sore labour
and fatigue, as if their ship had been driven from
her anchor and bearing up again." On going on
board he saw the deck strewed and lumbered with
goods; and expressing his surprise as one who would
fain know the reason of this, Madder the mate said
fiercely, " Damn you, what have you to do to in-
quire — meddle with your plaister-box." Still more
material — the surgeon had to heal some wounds,
apparently gun-shot, and a jealous reserve was kept
when lie made any inquiry as to the cause of them.
Along with the oral, there was some documentary
evidence. The most important was an instruction
to correspond in cypher. A fictitious alphabet is
supplied to the captain, with this warning: "For
the greater security of our affairs, when you write
by the alphabet in your instructions, I would
have you carry the last letter of each word to be in
the room of the first letter of the next word; as,
for example, ' Captain Thomas Bowrey Sir we are
all well,' Captai nthoma sbowre ysi no ear eal Iwett"
"Fair trading," said Sir David Dalrymple, the
counsel for the prosecution, " requires no such affec-
tation." This gentleman's address was able and
ingenious, not without some appeals to the prevail*
ing popular frenzy, as thus:
" The crime of piracy is complex, and is made

AND CAPTAIN GBEEN. 183

up of oppression, robbery, and murder, committed in*
places far remote and solitary. And, indeed, if God
had not, in a most wonderful way, brought the
crimes whereof the panels stand accused, to light,
they might have escaped unpunished in this world
to their own eternal destruction, and to the great
loss of such who may be amended or prevented by
the example of their punishment. But, although
the abuses now complained of happened in the vast
ocean, and at no less distance than the East Indies,
and' that the actors were tied by obvious reason to
secrecy on their own account, and were bound by a
religious command not to reveal or answer questions
—and, besides all these, it is most probable there
was a most impious oath interposed, as used to be
in such cases, and which has more force to restrain
men of such desperate principles and practices than
all the ties of religion or nature," &c.

This last allusion can only be understood by one
who is acquainted through the perusal of private
letters with the rumours of the day. One of
these bore that the whole pirate crew having been
bled, a portion of the blood of each was dropped
into one vessel, where it was mixed with wine, and
then each, taking a piece of bread, dipped it in the
horrid mixture, and, by this profane sacrament,
swore to keep their common crimes a secret.

184 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

The verdict of the jury was returned on the 14th
of March, in these terms: "They, by plurality of
votes, find that there is one clear witness as to the
piracy, robbery, and murder, libelled; and that
there are accumulative and concurring presumptions
proven for the piracy and robbery so libelled."
And the court interpreting this as a conviction,
sentenced the accused to be hanged in three several
instalments within flood-mark, on the sands of
Leith.

No one accustomed to observe the administration
of justice in this country, will now say that the
evidence justified a conviction, though it leaves on
the reader an impression, sufficiently distinct for the
historical conclusion, that the crew of the Worcester
had been guilty of some acts of violence, of the kind
then so common in the high seas. But in reality the
verdict was found by men who were fighting for na-
tional independence, and avenging national wrongs,
rather than deliberately weighing evidence. It
may be hoped that, never in the breast of any one
of the majority who convicted these men, did the
intention exist of sacrificing innocent men even to
the genius of national independence; and the true
interpretation of their conduct may be found in the
strong prepossessions that unfitted them, and per-
haps would, at such a time, have unfitted almost

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 185

every Scotsman, for the deliberative functions of the
juryman.

Soon after the trial, admissions were made by
some of the condemned prisoners, which only
deepened die difficulty, by feeding the passions of
. the national party without convincing the unpre-
judiced. On the 27th of March, after another of
the crew had made an indistinct admission, Haines
the steward emitted a confession which was for-
mally attested by the judge of the admiralty court.
It admitted the crime of piracy, in terms pretty
nearly the same as those in which it had been set
forth in the indictment, Haines representing himself
as having been an unwilling and merely passive
accessary. In this confession, he professed his igno-
rance of the particular ship on which the piracy
had been committed, and of the fate of the crew;
but three days afterwards he made a supplementary
confession or declaration, " that after the ship therein
mentioned was seized, he saw the men which were
therein killed and murdered with pole-axes and
cutlasses, and saw their dead bodies put into the
sloop, and thereafter thrown overboard. And to
the best of the declarant's knowledge, the said men
so killed were Scotsmen, the declarant having
heard them speak in the Scots' language. And
further declares, that the said ship then seized was

188 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

in this matter must be the gift of God, for I doubt
much that it's in the power of man to convince this
nation of it. I was surprised to find people affirm
that the evidence was suborned, and that those who
confess do it in the dread of torture or upon pro-
mise of life. The Whigs* make a national Jacobitish
business of it, and it will be trumped up at all the

elections."!

A rumour may be traced in the correspondence
of the period, that the English government would
blockade the Scottish coast to cut off communica-
tion with France, should it be necessary to use
coercive measures towards Scotland. In the minutes
of the privy council there is evidence of the effect
of this rumour on both sides. On the 12th of
March there is an investigation on the " insolence"
of Captain Howe, commander of an English man-
of-war, who had dared to search vessels in the
Scottish waters. He was required to appear before
the council and answer for his conduct, but he
haughtily refused. A subsequent minute, however,
bears testimony fc> his " being since better informed,
and come to a just sense of his mistake;" when he
promises caution for the future, and throws the

* Expressed in cypher by the figure 6.
t Jerriswood Correspondence, printed for the Bannatyne
Club, p. 70.

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 189

blame, according to established practice, on an in-
ferior officer, who had exceeded his instructions.
The submission of this officer was an indication
that the English, government deemed it wiser to
soothe than to threaten. The faintest affront to
Scotland would have produced immediate war, with
such miserable consequences in the indefinite hosti-
lity of two nations. on the eve of a cordial union, as
must have alarmed conscientious statesmen.

Still it was believed that Scotland was about to
put English citizens to death, and it was seen with
indignation that the English government did no-
thing. It was supposed that her majesty would at the
last extend to the convicts the beneficent preroga-
tive of pardon; but she required to exercise it
through the Scottish privy council, and it was
questioned whether they would sanction it, or dared
to do so were they inclined. It is worthy of notice
that the affidavits which we have mentioned tending
to the exculpation of the accused wore sent officially
by her majesty to the privy council. One of their
body mentions that the council refused at first to
receive them, as they were not technically authen-
ticated; and then, when the originals came, treated
them as irrelevant.* On the 25th of March a letter
was read from the Duke of Argyle, intimating the
* Jerriswood Correspondence, p. 75.

190 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

queen's desire that the execution should be sus-
pended till her majesty's pleasure was known; but
the council declined to act on it, holding it not to
be in the proper form for the exercise of the royal
prerogative. In their answer, the council state that
they are "most tender of your majesty's prero-
gative in matters of this nature." They state that
everything had proceeded according to law and
form. They mention the confessions, which they
say leave no place for doubt that "the said piracy,
robbery, and murder, was committed upon Captain
Drummond, and his ship sent out by the African
company of this kingdom." They beg that her
majesty may be induced to take no steps in the mat-
ter, save as she may be advised by her faithful
council in Scotland; and state that they feared
the step she had already taken had prevented the
other convicts from confessing. They state that
they have granted no reprieve except to those
who had confessed, and assure her majesty " that
this aflair appears to us to be of the highest con-
sequence for your majesty's interest and service,
and the necessary satisfaction of all your people."*
Receiving on the day before that fixed for the
execution a peremptory command from her majesty

* Minutes of Privy Council (28th March), General Register
House.

AND CAPTAIN GREEK. 191

to grant a reprieve until further inquiry, they com-
plied, by changing the day of execution from the
4th to the 11th of April. The council address her
majesty at length; they "entreat and obtest" that
she will grant no further reprieves or remissions;
giving her an account of the confession of Bruck-
ley, and saying " it is the great concern of your
majesty's service, and the earnest expectation of all
your people, not otherwise to be satisfied, that the
public justice of the nation be allowed to proceed
without any further stop."

On the day before the expiry of the reprieve —
the 10th of April — the matter again came before
the council, as it was necessary to decide whether
the law should have its courae, or the queen's wishes
should be carried out by a further postponement of
the execution, until the inquiry contemplated by
her advisers had been completed. It was a nervous
deliberation. The excitement of the people was
deep and fierce, and — an ominous phenomenon,
always indicative in Scotland of the nation being
stirred from its heart,— people flocked to Edinburgh
from distant parts of the country, as they did thirty
years afterwards to the execution of Porteous. The
council, even as its proceedings appear, on its own
minutes, showed itself incompetent to deal with
such a crisis. The queen and England were on one

192 THE DABIEN EXPEDITION

side, and the mob on the other, and it would take
no courageous stand. Three voted for a further
reprieve — three voted against it. The others who
were present would not vote. In this inequality it
lay with the chancellor to decide the question by
his casting vote. He declined exercising this
offensive privilege; since there were others present
who might give the votes which rendered it un-
necessary, but would not. He said he was in favour
of the reprieve, and was prepared to sign it, if those
who had not voted would join him; but they would
not. Thus nothing was resolved on; but the mere
neutrality was fatal, for the previous decision of
the council, which appointed the convicts to be exe-
cuted next day, remained unaltered.

On the I lth, the great central thoroughfare of
Edinburgh — the High-street — was filled with a
menacing mob— national, rather than local It was
clear to every one who walked abroad that day that
there would be violence and slaughter ere night ;
how much, or in what quarter, were the chief
questions. The privy council assembled in their
chambers beneath the Parliament House, and the
mob swarmed in the space in front and upwards to
the ditch of the castle, in which, for better security,
the prisoners were kept. It was known that " a
flying post" — one of those who had so frequently

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 193

arrived of late — had come from the court in London,
and the mob were excited to the point of outbreak
by the belief that it brought a pardon or reprieve to
the prisoners. The communication from her majesty
alluded calmly and almost sadly to the reasons which
had been given for a belief that Drummond and his
crew were still alive. It contained some further
documents supposed to bear on the point — affidavits
as to vessels which had brought the latest news from
India, yet did not mention any piracy correspond-
ing to that of which Green had been found guilty, —
and the like. The contents of the despatch showed
how anxious the queen's advisers in England were
to avert the catastrophe, were it possible. In the
end, however, she left the question in the hands of
the council, recommending it to their "calmness
and consideration." It was decided that Green him-
self, Madder the mate, and Simpson the gunner,
should be executed; the others were reprieved, and,
subsequently, were quietly released.

The mob outside, from whom violence was every
moment expected, — who, indeed, had already began
to make themselves heard against the outer door of
the council chamber, learned with savage joy that
three victims were to be executed, and had been
despatched to Leith. A detachment of the crowd
hurrying in that direction, relieved the anxious

VOL. I. O

194 THE DAEIEN EXPEDITION

councillors. The chancellor thought he might
safely go home in his coach. As he entered it he
was cheered, but somehow his leaving the council
created suspicion in the mob, and they made a rush,
on his vehicle, from which he narrowly escaped
alive, finding refuge in Milne's-court, a cul-de-sac,
where his followers defended him until the crowd,
satisfied that the original victims were to be sacri-
ficed, followed their fellows to a more inviting

This account of the state of Edinburgh is abun-
dantly supported by the correspondence of the time.
Of the execution, as it took place on the sands of
Leith, we have never seen any account, save from
the most suspicious of sources — the authors of par-
tisan pamphlets still fiercely denouncing the victims.
Their wrath was excited by a species of reaction,
caused by the circulation of Green's dying decla-
ration, in which evidently, with the aid of skilful
hands — it betrays some Scottish law technicalities —
he solemnly, and with great pathos, protested his
innocence of the crime for which he suffered. In
one of these denunciatory pamphlets it is stated
that Green trusted to the last that he would be
pardoned, and when he was taken down to execu-
tion deemed it a mere matter of form. " When he
was upon the ladder," says the writer, " he turned

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 195

off the cloth off his face two several times — no
doubt in expectation of some reprieve— &nd after
his being half off the ladder he grasped with hand
and foot to recover himself back again, till Madder's
■tern frown (against which the other was not proof)
frightened him at last in a surprising and unwilling
compliance with death." When the tragedy was
completed, and, from many points of hilly Edin-
burgh, the bodies of the victims might be seen
swinging on the sands of Leith, the national venge-
ance was more than satiated, and many of those
who had been foremost in the strife were afraid to
think what they had done.

There was one Scotsman, at least, a man of ster-
ling patriotism, who viewed the whole proceedings
with deep disgust and grief. Duncan Forbes after-
wards stated in the British parliament his belief
that Green suffered for no other crime than that of
being an Englishman, at a period of strong national
animosity; and that he had, as a testimony of his
feelings, borne the executed convict's head to the
grave. On this occasion he said, that "in a few
months after, letters came from the captain, for
whose murder, and from the very ship for whose
capture the unfortunate person suffered, informing
their friends that they were all safe." We are not
aware of any other allusion to such letters, and
02

196 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

Forbes merely said that they bore date after the
time when the piracy by Green was maintained to
have been committed. He did not refer to the
subsequent fate of Drummond and his crew, but on
this point there is literary evidence of a very curious
and romantic character.

In the affidavits already alluded to, it is stated
that the vessel, the Speedy Return, of which Captain
Stewart was master, and Captain Drummond super-
cargo, sailed from Britain in May, 1701, and after
touching at various places, reached Madagascar.
While Drummond and some others were there on
shore, a band of pirates were said to have seized the
vessel, and conveyed her to Rajapore, where she was
burned. If this were true, a piracy had occurred,
but it was far distant from the spot where Green was
alleged to have seized the vessel. In the year 1729
there was published a curious volume, rivalling
Robinson Crusoe in interest, called " Madagascar, or
Robert Drury's Journal during Fifteen Years' Cap-
tivity in that Island." He states that he was but a
youth of fourteen when he wais shipwrecked, with the
rest of the crew of the ship Degrave, on the coast of
Madagascar. There he found " Captain Drummond,
a Scotchman," who, he says, was left ashore on his
vessel being taken by pirates, and was accompanied
by a Captain Stewart. Drummond appears several

i

AND CAPTAIN GREEN. 197

times among Drury's adventures, ever in a resolute,
adventurous, and fierce character. He had been
induced, it seems, Under fallacious hopes, to put
himself in the hands of the king of the district, who,
under the effect of toake, immediately boasted, as
the interpreter told Drummond, that the g<?ds had
sent the . white man to him, and they should not
leave him while he lived. " As soon," says the
narrative, " as Captain Drummond understood this,
his colour rose, and looking as sternly as the king,
he replied, * Let him know that if I could have
suspected this beforehand, he should never have
seen my face alive; I would have sent some of
their black souls to hell. It is not their gods — it
is nothing but fortune and chance has put me into
his power, and by fortune I may be delivered
from him.' " Instead of resenting this, " the king,
seeing Captain Drummond go away in a passion, to
appease him, sent one of his generals with an ox for
us to kill, and desired the captain to make himself
easy; we should be well provided for; if we could
eat an ox every day, we should have it."

Nor when Drummond, in attempting to escape,
shot one of the king's attendants, .did the cunning ■
savage betray wrath. In fact, he had made up his
mind to make the gallant Scotsman's prowess a terror
to his enemies; and made a proposal that the white

1 98 \ THE DAKIEN EXPEDITION

men, whom disasters at sea had thrown on his terri-
tories, should enter his service, Drummond taking
the command of his armies, and the others being dis-
persed in different bodies. The white men were
allowed to hold a meeting to deliberate on their
answer. Then Drummond proposed a project, as
original as it was bold; to seize the king, his sons,
and his wives, and forming themselves in a body,
protected by the presence of their prisoners from
attack by missiles, fight their way across the
island to Dauphine — the old deserted French settle-
ment—where European vessels sometimes touched.
The first part of the project was executed with entire
success in the king's capital, and in the middle of
a vast native force. The captors and their captives
started on their strange journey, the dusky hordes
of native troops hovering, almost paralysed by
astonishment, in the rear of the little phalanx,
and uttering wild lamentations. For four days,
the journey was pursued under intense hardships
and difficulties. Then the spirit of many of
the white men seems to have been broken; for,
contrary to Drummond's earnest exhortations, they
bought relief and aid, with promises of peace,
from their pursuers, by releasing their prisoners
one by one. The king himself was the last re-
leased, under ample assurances that the little band

AND CAPTAIN GBEEN. 199

might proceed unmolested. In the night, Drum-
xnond disappeared along with Stewart and a person
who, in the narrative, was named Bembo. It was
not mere selfish flight — they returned immediately
with a force from a neighbouring hostile tribe: but
it was only to find the mutilated corpses of their
comrades, who, all but the boy Drury, were
slaughtered. Drummond, however, never left the
island. He was for some years a renowned warrior
under the chief, in whose territories he found
refuge; and a terror to the tribe who had per-
fidiously slain his weaker brethren. When, fifteen
years afterwards, Drury found his way to the other
side of the island, he made inquiry about the
fugitives of a man named Dove. " By him," he
says, " I understood that Mr. Bembo got to Eng-
land, but Captain Drummond never got off the
island, he being killed, though the particular
manner and occasion he could not inform me. But
they told me one remarkable piece of news, for the
truth of which I must refer my readers to further
inquiry. They said that this Captain Drummond
was the very same man for whose murder and his
crews', one Captain Green, commander of an East
India ship, was hanged in Scotland."* If we sup-
pose Drury's work to be an attempt to pass a fiction
* Madagascar, p. 436.

200 THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

as a true narrative, such a series of incidents, con-
necting Drummond with the spot where two of
his crew asserted that he had been left, is precisely
what an ingenious forger would dovetail into his
scheme. Though the marvellous character of Drury 's
narrative, however, did subject it for a time to sus-
picion, it obtained, on examination, a character for
veracity; and it is stated in the " Biblioth&que
Universelle des Voyages," that subsequent in-
quirers have found his statements of the geography,
the natural history, the manners of the people, and
the conspicuous men of the time, remarkably ac-
curate. But, besides this general testimony, there
remains a minute and curious piece of incidental
evidence connecting itself with the person named
Bembo. In the " Gentleman's Magazine" for 1769,*
there is an account of William Benbow, a son of the
gallant admiral, whose last conflict had been at
once a boast and a scandal to his countrymen, in
the gallantry of the commander and the baseness of
his officers. The author of that notice regrets
that a memoir, written by William Benbow, was
accidentally consumed, and proceeds to say: " The
most curious and interesting part of it was that in
which he gave an account of the crew of the Degrave
—East Indiaman — seizing after their shipwreck a
♦ P, 171.

AND CAPTAIN GBEEN. 201

black king, his queen, and son in Madagascar, and
marching with them over part of the island, and of
his escaping from his companion to port Dauphine."
And then, referring to Drury's work, he says : " Mr.
Benbow's narrative is a strange confirmation of the
truth of this journal, with which, so far as it went,
it exactly tallied."

THE

BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

A LONG conflict between two great houses in the

North reached its climax in a tragedy so strange

and horrible, that it became marked and renowned

among the thousands of feudal outrages which fill

the history of the period. Though common fame

stamped it as an act of feudal vengeance, its secret

history was never entirely explained. Investigations

which were apparently, at least, judicial, and which

professed very laboriously and impartially to strive

after the truth, left the matter doubtful; and the

most prejudiced historians could never say that

[ their dark •suspicions were entirely proved. With

| pretty abundant materials, it is impossible, even at

| the present day, entirely to clear up the mystery;

; but we caii see by what machinations inquiry was

! baffled, and we can draw the natural inference. We

THE BURNING OF FBENDBATJGHT. 203

can see who holds the curtain before it, though we
may not see who is acting the tragedy.

Before the great families of Scotland lost their
power, the Gordons ruled it from the northern slope
of the Grampians, through Aberdeenshire to the
Murray Firth. In the seventeenth century, a rival
family — that of the Orichtons — which had risen in
formidable emulation in the same district, bid fair
to overwhelm and supersede the old power of the
Gordons. But in the events we are going to relate,
they sunk in the contest} and disappeared from the
territorial aristocracy of Scotland, leaving nothing
behind them in the northern part of the country
but the remembrance of their power and tyranny.

In the southern shires, however, where they ob-
tained their earliest position, they took a place in
history. The common mistake of historians to
suppose that the history of the court is that of the
nation, makes those branches of a family who lived
near Edinburgh conspicuous political personages;
while others, who had semi-regal powers at a fortu-
nate distance from Holyrood House, are as obscure

• in history as fox-hunting squires. In the ordinary
sources of information little is said about the
Crichtons of the North, but the portion of the

* family who settled near Edinburgh occupy a con-
siderable space in the annals of the earlier Jameses.

,

204 THE BURNING OF PRENDRAUGHT.

In the middle of the fifteenth century the family
had a struggle for supremacy with the Doug-
lases in the South, as they afterwards had with the
Gordons in the North. They seem never to have
been very scrupulous of the means by which they
obtained their ambitious ends; and among a series
of violent, not to say criminal acts, the reader of
history will readily remember the slaughter of the
young Douglases in Edinburgh Castle, when a black
bull's head was presented to them, as a token that
the hospitable board to which they were invited
was converted into their place of execution.

Of this southern branch of the Crichtons, however,
more pleasing recollections are preserved in the beau-
tiful remains of their palace stronghold, standing on
a wild moor, at the head of the Scottish Tyne; but
covered with those rich oriental-looking decorations
which justify Scott's luxuriant, yet accurate, descrip-
tion of them in " Marmion," commencing,

"Nor wholly yet hath time defaced
Thy lordly gallery fair,
Nor yet the stony cord unbraced,
Whose twisted knots with roses laced,
Adorn thy mined stair."

But let us look northward, where, as the southern
branch of the family who had endeavoured to rise
by court intrigue and influence were gradually
declining, their cousins were adding acre unto acre,

\

THE BURNING OF F RE NDR AUGHT. 205

and effectually but quietly acquiring great signorial
powers. They founded houses in the shires of
Perth and Aberdeen, continuing in the old Scottish
fashion to support each other in their feuds. Thus,
in 1599, we find that Sir Robert Crichton of Cluny,
charged with the slaughter of William Meldrum
of Montcoffer, gets his kinsman, John Crichton of
Invernytie, in Aberdeenshire, to be his security ; and
his trial is postponed, because it is understood that
he is to appear in court accompanied -by so large a
band of followers, that his majesty thinks it neces-
sary to adjourn the proceedings, lest " great incon-
venience may ensue, to the disquieting of our
peaceable subjects and present estate."* There is a
temptation to notice this small incident, in the cir-
cumstance that the marvel of heroism and rhetoric
— the Admirable Crichton — was a Crichton of
Cluny, and appears to have been the brother of
this Sir Robert.

The principal residence of the Crichtons in
Aberdeenshire was the fortalice of Frendraught,
the mouldering remains of which, just rising
above the ground, amid some venerable trees, are
looked on with mysterious awe, as if they were
yet some day to reveal the dread secret of their

* Fitcairn's Criminal Trials, iL, 77.

206 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

transmutation in one night from a fair hall to a
black heap of ruins. The traditions of the peasantry
always associate the extinct race of the Crichtons
with a career of oppression and violence, and archae-
ological vestiges of a far earlier period are gene-
rally assigned, after the usual custom of tradition,
to some real or imagined event in their evil his-
tory. Thus a topographical writer in a periodical
of the year 1761, says: " About a quarter of a mile
west of Frendraught, on the roadside at Tarvis
bum, is to be seen an old cairn or heap of stone,
the tradition about which is, that at this place the
last Dunbar of Frendraught was murdered in re-
gard he refused to consent to his daughter's mar-
riage with Criohton, and which was perpetrated by
some of his followers, after which he married the
lady and took possession of the estate. A mile
south-east of Frendraught, on the roadside towards
Glen Mellen, is Murray's cairn, at which place Mur-
ray of Cowbardy was murdered by the Crichtons
upon some slight quarrel. Half a mile north from
Frendraught, on the top of the Riach hill, stood the
gibbet, upon which many suffered, as may be seen
by the remains of their graves; and a little below
the bridge of Forgue are to be seen the graves of
a gang of gipsies who suffered death by drowning.

THE BURNING Off FBENDRAUOHT. 207

The lords of Frendraught were severe justiciaries
within their own regality. Many other accounts of
their severity might be here added."*

The great rivals and enemies of the rising house
of Crichton were, of course, the Gordons. With the
one or the other every person was required to enrol
himself in clientage, and woe to him who should
attempt to live independent of both. In that day
it was the practice for those who did not belong to
some considerable family in alliance with the domi-
nant house, to take its name. To be without a chief
involved a kind of disrepute; and those who had
no distinct personal position of their own would find
it necessary to become a Gordon or a Crichton, as
prudence or inclination might point out. It was a
not unfeequent practice to come under written
obligation to take the surname of some great house.
Thus, we have seen of so late a date as 1711, a
bond by which John and James Macgregor say we
" bind and oblige us, our heirs and successors, and
all that ever shall come of us and our families
whatsomever, to call ourselves and to be Gordons,
still attending and depending on the noble family
of Huntly, and that both in word and write in all

* Edinburgh Magazine, 1761. Reprinted in Antiquities of
the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, il., 820.

208 THE BURNING OF FBENDRAUGHT.

time coming: and we further oblige us that we
never shall subscribe to or sign any papers but
Gordon as aforesaid."

Gordon of Rothiemay having estates which, being
contiguous to those of Crichton, had to bear all the
evils of a frontier territory, there were conflicts in
the law courts, followed out by hand-to-hand bat-
tles with broadsword and matchlock. One of these
engagements took place in 1630, and was fought
with great obstinacy. Rothiemay was mortally
wounded, and only survived for a few days. The
relations of the slain man made arrangements for
taking signal vengeance; and in addition to their
own followers, they obtained the aid of a kind of
mercenary soldiery, ready at that time for any
service in any part of the world — the Highland
freebooters, of whom 200 well armed, were en-
camped round the house of Rothiemay, under two
renowned robber chieftains named Grant, against
whom the law had in vain been fulminating for
years together. The head of the Gordons, however,
the Marquis of Huntly, and his relation, Sir Robert
Gordon, used all their efforts to arrest the threat-
ened " harrying," as it was termed, of the territory
of the Crichtons. They were unusually successful
in producing at least an apparent reconciliation,

THE BUBNING OF FRENDBAUGHT. 209

" and so all parties having shaken hands in the
orchard of Strathbogie, they were heartily recon-
ciled."*

The Crichtons agreed to pay a sum of 50,000
merks to Rothiemay's widow " in composition
of the slaughter." A follower or client of Crich-
ton, called John Meldrum, of RedhiU, had been
wounded in the fray with Rothiemay. He ex-
pected some reward for his services which he
did not obtain, and took umbrage at his chief.
For a gentleman of landed property his method
of seeking redress would in the present day
be considered somewhat strange. " Whereupon,.
John Meldrum cometh secretly, under silence of
the night, to the park of Frendraught, and con-
veyeth away two of Frendraught's best horses.
Frendraught taketh this lightly, and calleth John
Meldrum before the justice for theft. He turneth
rebel, and doth not appear."* He was sheltered in
the strong fortalice of his brother-in-law, Leslie of
Pitcaple. Frendraught and his relation, Crichton
of Conland, met by accident the son of Leslie of
Pitcaple, and high words passed about the shelter-

* Gordon's Genealogical History of the Earldom of Suther-
land, p. 419.
flbid.

VOL. I. F

210 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

ing of Meldrum. In the middle of the dispute,
Crichton of Conland drew forth a pistol, and shot
young Leslie. Thus out of a family who had been
their warm friends, the Crichtons made bitter
feudal enemies. Frendraught, alarmed apparently
at his position, appeared desirous to conciliate the
Gordons, and asked the Marquis of Huntly to use
his influence to heal the feud with the Leslies.
But young Leslie was lying in his father's hall, be-
tween life and death, and a reconciliation under
such circumstances was impossible. Frendraught had
urged his suit when on a visit to Huntly's castle,
and the chivalrous chief of the Gordons was desirous
that he should, at alt events, be safe in returning
from the Castle of Strathbogie to his own home ;
a very unlikely consummation, since an armed band
of the Leslies were on the watch to waylay him.
Huntly, after having entertained him for a few
days, sent his son, Lord Aboyne, and the young
Laird of Rothiemay as his escorts.

When they reached Frendraught, they were
desired to remain there and partake of its hospi-
talities. The Lady Frendraught was especially
anxious that they should seal the abandonment of
the old feud between the Gordons and the Crich-
tons in conviviality. In the words of an old
ballad:

THE BTJKNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 211

" When steeds were saddled, and well bridled,
And ready for to ride;
Then out came she and false Frendrsught,
Inviting them to bide.

" Said, * Stay this night until we sup,
The morn until we dine;
'Twill be a token of good Agreement,
Twixt your good lord and mine.' "

They remained, and thus Frendraught had under
his ro<5f the son of his great feudal enemy, Huntly,
and the son of the man for whose slaughter he
had to make pecuniary compensation. Fart of the
Castle of Frendraught was the grim, windowless,
Sid square tower, so common in Scotland. Each
floor had but one chamber, the thick walls occupy*
ing the greater part of the space. The lowest
chamber was vaulted, the others were covered with
wood. The owners of such edifices were sometimes
jealous of permanent stairs, and in the centre of the
vault at Frendraught „ there was a round hole for
reaching the floor above by a ladder. In the room
thus entered slept Aboyne, with his follower Ro-
bert Gordon, and his page " English WilL" In
the floor above slept Rothiemay with some of his
followers, and in the third another band of fol-
lowers; it was observed that the whole of the party
who had escorted Frendraught from Strathbogie
P2

212 THE BURNING OF F KEN DRAUGHT.

were lodged in this tower. After a convivial even-
ing they slept soundly. What afterwards hap-
pened, cannot be better told than in the simple
words of a contemporary annalist:

" Thus all being at rest, about midnight this
dolorous tour took fire in so suddent and furious
a manner, yea, in one clap, that this noble viscount,
the Laird of Rothiemay, English Will, Colin Ivat,
another of Aboyne's servitours, and other twaj being
six in number, were cruelly brunt and tormented to
the death, but help or relief, the Laird of Fren-
draught, his lady and whole household, looking
on without moving or stirring to deliver them frft
the fury of this fearful fire as was reported,

" Robert Gordon, called Sutherland Robert, being
in the viscount's chamber escaped this fire with his
life. George Chalmer, and Captain Rollok being
in the third room, escaped also this fire, and, as was
said, Aboyne might have saved himself also if he
had gone out of doors, quhilk he would not do, but
sudaintly ran up-stairs to Rothiemay *s chamber and
wakened him to rise; and as he is wakening him
the timber passage and lofting of the passage hastily
takes fire, so that none of them could come down
stairs again. So they turned to ane window looking
to the close, where they piteously cried help, help,

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 213

many times, for God's cause. The laird and the
lady with their servants, all seeing and hearing
this woful crying, but made no help nor maner
of helping, which they perceiving, they cried often
times mercy at God's hands for their sins, syne
claspit in each other's armes and cheerfully suffered
this cruel martyrdom. Thus died this noble viscount
of singular expectation, Rothiemay, a brave youth,
and the rest, by this doleful fire never enough to be
deplored, to the great sorrow and grief of their kin,
friends, parents, and hail country people, especially
the noble marquis, who for his good-will got this
reward."*

This tragedy, round which many of the tradi-
tions of the north centre, has been told in rhyme
as well as prose, and as we shall see in more than
one language. " The fire of Frendraught" is well
known to the students of Scottish ballad literature. .
Often has the writer of this notice heard it in early
childhood sung or chanted near the spot, and not
sensibly varying in the various mouths which gave
utterance to it; the evidently genuine version of it
in Motherwell's minstrelsy gives it to the reader
exactly as the peasant would repeat it to the curious
listener. This embodiment of the deep popular

* Spalding's Memorialls of the Trables. Spalding Club edi-
tion, i., 18.

214 THE BURNING OF FREXDRAUGHT.

indignation of the time has already been noticed,
and a further quotation from it will readily dovetail
into this part of the narrative:

" They had not long cast off their deaths,
And were bat now ■riocp,
When the weary smoke began to rise.
Likewise the scorching heat.

" ' O waken, waken, Rothiemay,
O waken, brother dear,
And turn you to our Saviour;
There is strong treason here.'

"When they were dressed in their deaths,
And ready for to boon,
The doors and windows was all secured —
The roof-tree burning down.

" He did him to the weir window
As fast as he could gang— #

Says — wae to the hands put in the stancheons,
For oat well never win.

** When he stood at the weir window,
Host doleful to be seen,
He did espy her Lady Frendraught,
Who stood upon the green. *

" Cried, « Mercy— mercy— Lady Frendraught ;
Will ye not sink with sin?

For first your husband killed my father, ,

And then you burn his son.'

" O then out-spoke her Lady Frendraught,
And loudly did she cry:
•It were great pity for good Lord John,
But none for Rothiemay.

But the keys are casten in the deep draw-well;* ■

Ye cannot get away.' " ,

* The editor of another collection of ballads, Mr. Finlay, in

reference to this verse, of which he had but an imperfect copy, '

I
i

THE BURNING OP FRENDRAUGHT. 215

The event was described and lamented by a poet
of higher aspirations and wider ambition. Arthur
Johnston, the rival of Buchanan, dedicated two
Latin poems to the Fren draught tragedy; and, as
they were printed and chiefly read in Holland, he
might speak out. He writes like one who had
stood among the horrid ruins; and we know that he
lived near the spot, since he commemorates in one
of his curious and pleasant epigrams the shadow of
the neighbouring hill of Bennochie just touching
his paternal estate in the horizontal sunlight of the
equinox. After many of the common places of the
imitators of the classics, as,

"Horruit aspectu tellus et pontus et aether,"

he descends to particularities, which show that his
sympathy, if not some stronger feeling, was em-
barked in the sad history :

" Innocuos juvines, patriis in finibus, inter
Mille clientelas et avito sanguine junctos
Hospitii dominos, omnis damnique dolique
Secures — somnoque graves, et noctis opacas
Vellatos tenebris, animatis sulphure flammis
Vidimus extinctos, et tracta cadavera fcedis

says, he was told that " many years afterwards, when the well
was cleared out, this tradition was corroborated by their finding
the keys — at least, such was the report of the country."
There never is a specific tradition of any event without also a
tradition or report of some discovery corroborating it.

216 THE BURNING OF FRENDBAUGHT*

Indignisque modis, postquam sunt ultima passi.
Tristis et infelbc et semper inhospita turris;
Momento succensa brevi, semul ima supremis
Miscuit, et tumulos thalamis et funera somno,
Et famulis dominos, quorum confusa jacebant
Obruta ruderibus cinis, ossa, cadavera; namque
Corporis unius, memini, pars ossa fuerunt
Pars cinis immundus — tostum pars igne cadaver;
Quam sors dura fuit! vivos dum pascitur ignis
Nemo manu, prcece nemo juvat, nee abire parantes
Qui8quam animas pius ore legit, vocesve supremas
Aure bibit, dextra vel lumina condit arnica,
Nemo sacra cineres turbatos excipit urna» w *

The ashes of the dead were however collected in
separate caskets or coffins, and conveyed to the
church of Gartly, where the country people will still

* Johnstoni Parerga, p. 332. Arthur Johnston was the poet
whose version of the psalms Benson published in so magnificent
a shape, eliciting from Pope the sarcastic couplet which con-
nects it with his monument to Milton:

" On two unequal crutches propt he came,
Milton on this— on that one Johnston's name."

Whether Johnston justly deserved the antithesis which con-
demns him to the Dunciad order, the reader may perhaps
judge from the specimen of his efforts given above. The
northern reader, who is not generally deemed well qualified to
judge critically of such productions, is content to acknowledge
the interest excited by a Latinist, who goes over so many
local and personal subjects, on which he may be supposed to
have actually felt, instead of adopting " classic models." He
was one of many Scottish Latinists of that age, who had a con-
tinental, rather than a home reputation. The English was
becoming the literary language of Britain, and the vernacular
Scottish so far differed from it, that Scotsmen found it easier
to write in Latin than in English.

THE BURNING OP F REND R AUGHT. 217

show the vault in which they are traditionally said to
lie. These pious duties being performed, the Gordons
of course turned their thoughts to vengeance. Spald-
ing, the chronicler, says it was resolved that to propi-
tiate them, on the day after the tragedy, the Lady of
» Irendraught, in a white plaid or wimple, " and riding
on ane small nag, having ane boy leading her horse
without any more in her company," went weeping
to the gates of Strathbogie beseeching an audience
of the Marquis of Huntly, but was sternly repulsed,
" and returned back to her own house the same
gate she came — comfortless." Some polemical wri-
ters have endeavoured to prove that the boy who so
accompanied her was her confidential adviser — a
Jesuit in disguise. There is curious evidence that
the lady kept such a person in her employment,
though her husband was a professedly zealotis Pres-
byterian, whom the Catholics charged with a reli-
gious enmity to the house of Gordon. A certain
Gilbert Blackhal, who had been a secret and
dexterous agent of the Jesuits in the most danger-
ous times and places, left a journal of his adven-
tures, in which he says: " My lady of Frendraught
did send to me praying me to come to her to be
her ordinary, for the frlre whom she had before was
departed from this life. I refused absolutely to
see her, because she was suspected to be guilty of

218 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

the death of my Lord of Aboyne, who seven years
ago was burned in the castle of Frendraught. w#

While the lady was on her penitential mission
grave council was held in the Castle of Strathbogie,
whether Lord Errol and other distant partisans of
the Gordons had hastened. We are told that the
assembly, u after serious consultation, concluded this
fearful fire could not come by chance, sloth, or
accident, but that it was plotted and devised of set
purpose; whereof Frendraught, his lady, his. friends,
or servitors, one or other was upon the knowledge.'*
Having come to this conclusion, it was held that the
criminality of the parties was so open to proof, that
private vengeance or feudal war would be unneces-
sary — it was better to seek Tedress at the hands of
the law. Thus the belief entertained by the Gor-
dons, and generally participated in, was that the
demon of family hate had driven Frendraught to
the murder of the confiding guests, though it could
only be accomplished by the destruction of his own
fortalice.

Frendraught went immediately to Perth, where
the chancellor was residing, and threw himself on
the protection of that powerful officer, passing with
him to Edinburgh, where he declared that he was

* A Brieffe Narration of the Services done to three Nohle
Ladyes, by Gilbert Blackhal, p. 58.

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 219

prepared to abide all investigation, maintaining that
the act "was committed by some devilish and
odious plotters against him, his life, and estate,"
and begging in the mean time that he might receive
protection in his person and property from the fury
of his enemies. Thereupon commenced a series of
tedious and perplexing legal proceedings, wherein
with bustling pomposity the most untiring efforts
appear to have been made to discover the criminal.
In the midst of a general confusion of commissions,
dittays, questions with the boots, deliverances,
"summonds, exceptions, replies, duplies, indices,
and presumptions produced and used therewith,"
one figure ever appears in the midst of the confu-
sion calm and undisturbed — this is Frendraught
himself, who resides with his friend the chancellor,
attends the meetings of the privy council occa-
sionally, and is never troubled or questioned, while
the pursuit after minor personages becomes ever
hotter and fiercer. The privy council seemed for
some months to have no other business but this in-
quiry. They commenced it on truly inductive
principles. The Earl Marshal, the Bishops of
Aberdeen and Murray, with some others, were ap-
pointed as a committee of the privy council " to
sight and view the house of Frendraught, and to
consider the frame and structure thereof, and how
and by what means the fire was raised within the

220 THE BURNING OP PRENDBAUGHT.

same, and if the fire was accidental or done of set
purpose by the hand of man, and if there be any
possibility or probability that the fire could have
been raised by any persons without the house."
The committee were appointed on the 1st of Febru-
ary, 1631. On the 4th of April they made a re-
port on the spot distinct enough so far as it goes;
€t We find by all likelyhood that the fire whereby
the house was burnt was first raised in a vault,
wherein we find evidences of fire in three sundry
parts; one at the farthest end thereof, another to-
wards the mids, and the third in that part which
is hard by the hole that is under the bed which was
in the chamber above. Your good lordships will
excuse us if we determine not concerning the fire,
whether it was accidental or of set purpose by the
hand of man, only this much it seemeth probable
unto us, after consideration of the forme of the
house and other circumstances, that no hand with-
out could have raised the fire without aid from
within."

It was necessary to let the virtuous fury of the
law loose on some obscure victims. A young wo-
man, named Margaret Wood, was accused of the
crime, on what ground it is hard to say. The ac-
count of her treatment is sickening. After she was
subjected to the torture of the boots, she would yet

\

THE BURNING OF FfiENDBAUGHT. 221

make no admission justifying further proceedings,
against her for the murder. She seems, indeed, to
have provoked the fury of her judges by directly
accusing Frendraught, in whose service she was;
for, according to the record of the Court of Justi-
ciary, she " did compear before his majesty's council,
and so far as in her lay, did lay the odious and
treasonable crime of burning the house of Fren-
draught upon a baron and gentleman of good quality,
and thereafter, in her several depositions made
before the said lords, did openly and manifestly
perjure herself, blaspheme the name of Almighty
God, and abuse, with her false lies and calumnies,
the said lords of his majesty's council." And there-,
fore the poor woman, because, under the effect of
torture, she so far forgot herself as to point to the
powerful man whom all believed to be guilty, was
sentenced to be " scourged through the burgh
of Edinburgh, and banished the kingdom." John
Tosh, a follower of Frendraught, was next accused
and brought to trial. The dettay, or indictment,
sets forth that Tosh, "upon what devilish insti-
gation altogether unknown," in the dead hour of
the night, when all the people and servants of the
place were at rest, " passed secretly to ane chamber
where one Thomas Joss, ane of his fellow-servants
within the same place, and ane keeper of the key

222 THE BURNING OF F REN DRAUGHT.

of the vaults, whilk was directly under the tower
wherein the said Lord Viscount of Melgum
[ Aboyne], the said Laird Rothiemay and their com*
pany lay, and secretly staw (stole) and brought
away with him the key out of the said Thomas Joss,
his breeks and pouches thereof, the said Thomas
being in bed and fast a£ sleep for the time; and
thereafter came to the said vault or laigh seller, be-
neath the said tower; and having opened the door
thereof, and drawn in and conveyed thereintil cer-
tain fagots, timber, powder, flax, and other com-
bustible matter provided and prepared by him; he,
the said John Tosh, out of ane devilish and desperate
humour, fired the same, by the firing and kindling
whereof, the said loftdngs above the said vault,
especially the chambers in the said tower wherein
the said lord viscount, the Laird of Rothiemay, and
their servants and followers, to the number of six
persons, Christian souls, were most pitifully burned
to dead."

To urge him to confess this preposterous story,
he was put" to the torture of the boots," and next
"to the torture of the pilniwinkies ;" yet, as his
counsel expressed it, hq "in all his sufferings of
baith the said tortures, constantly and upon his great
oath, declared that he was no ways the burner of
the house of Frendraught, acter, nor accessorie

THE BURNING OF FBEN DRAUGHT. 223

thereto, or that he knew anything anent the burn-
ing of the said house, nor who was the doer there-
of." It appears that there was some reason for
charging him with possessing for a short time, on
that memorable night, the key of the vault. He
went thither, it seems, to get a drink of water; and
it was adduced against him, that one time he said
it was for Domingo, the chief cook, and at another
time for Buck, the under cook. He was asked
about a " great lost," or chest which stood in the
vault, supposed to have contained combustibles; but
he could afford no revelations about it or anything.
There was not a shadow of real evidence against
him, though the crown counsel said poetically, that
" all the particular indices being massed together,
they may well be counted as stars to see the night
with."

It was impossible to make out a case against
Tosh; and, as a victim must be found, the next
attack made was on Frendraught's enemy and ex-
retainer, Meldrum. In the charge against him al-
lusion is made to the abduction of the horses already
mentioned — an offence aggravated by the insolent
manner in which Meldrum rode about the country
with them. It was laid down, that as he stood in
dread of just punishment at the instance of Fren-
draught, he resolved to revenge himself by blowing

224 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

up the castle, through the aid of the Highland
freebooters headed by John Grant, " ane notorious
sorner, outlaw, thief, and rebel," It certainly was
shown that he had expressed sufficient bitterness
against Frendraught, and threatened that he would
bring together as many Highlanders " as would sup
him in brose." He frequently said an evil turn
would overtake Frendraught, and according to
some witnesses alluded to fire as the form it should
take- Grant himself was caught and examined ;
he said that Meldrum held conversations with him,
and that he was evidently " bent upon revenge,
and had ane purpose to enter on blood;" but that
he, Grant, had too many other affairs on hand to
enter into his views. The only further specific
evidence appears to have been the statement of an
individual since executed, that on the fatal night
he met several horsemen in a road leading to Fren-
draught, u among whom he knew John Meldrum,
riding on ane mirk grey horse with ane millon
cloak." When Tosh was charged with the crime,
it was held that it must have been perpetrated by
persons having access to the building. Meldrum
and his abettors were on the other hand charged
with executing it externally, " having brought with
them ane large quantity of powder, pitch, brim-
stone, flax, and other combustible matter, provided

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 225

by them for the purpose, and put and conveyed the •
same in and through the slits and stones of the
vault of the sai4 great tower of Frendraught." The
impossibility of his doing this without aid from
within, was urged by his counsel; while it was in-
geniously put that if he had an accomplice in the
mansion, that accomplice must have known that
the vengeance on that night would fall not on Fren-
draught, but on Meldrum's own friends. A sen-
tence or two may be taken as a specimen of forensic
pleading in Scotland at that period:

lt Gif there was any slit therein (in the wall) it
was very narrow, and the wall ten foot thick, or
thereabout (now ye see good men of inquest how
necessar it is that the assisers should have been
countrymen who could have known thir things
best), so that neither could a man without wield his
hand well to cast, put, or shoot in combustible, or
kindle the same where it fell; but some in the dark
would have escaped the inputter and fallen by the
way (the wall being ten feet thick), and would have
come back by that same slit, whereof great vestiges
would have been found even from without (whilk
was not — neither can ye of the assize know, not
being of the country). Then what possibility to
wield ane spear through a slit ten foot thick, and
so narrow, to make anything touch the hole of

VOL. I. Q

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

the vault that is alleged to be under my Lord of
Melgum (Aboyne) his bed, without direction
-within, and (that) is already cleared not to have
been. Then the force of the powder and that
other matter if it had fallen against the meal arks,
it had broken if not burnt them; and if it had
not come back to the slit (as likely it would, because
it could not lie far from it, for the uneasiness of the
inputting of the same as said is), at least going to
the hole or O in the vault, it should have broken
the ladder, and being redacted in angustias, that is
to one great straigtness, it would ^have blown up
some of the vault near the head or O with ane
great noise, and my Lord Melgum to have been
first slain before burnt; where only the constant
report is, that there was ane great smoking before
he did awake, both in his chamber, and the other
where a boy was suffocate, and gave him liberty to
put on his clothes, and by the will of God went up
the stair when he ought to have come down." On
the absence of direct evidence, he says: " Fandnane
him to go out? Did not the doors or yets of the
house geig and make a noise, or how was the yet
of Fitcaple opened? Fand nane him to return?
Did nane meet him? Did nane see him but a
vacillant, variant, contradictory villain, what was
scourged and burnt on the cheek for the same; and

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 227

thereafter being tane for ane other crime, was
paneled and condemned. * * * Item, there
were ane number of horse; unlike preparation for
such a business. Also, he might well be refuted by
your wisdoms, as that other by the Amphictions,
who testified that he saw in the night Alcibiades,
and kenned him casting down the statue of Mercurie
at Athens. But to leave him in his darkness, I go
on and speirs (ask). How runs the panel so quickly,
ten or twelve miles, etiam cum tot impedementis,
and burdens that he behoved to have, if the dittay
be true? Went he on foot or horse? Wha held
the horse? Whare, also, was the combustible
matter coft? In what market, or booth, or fra
whom gotten? Wha caried the fire? How did
the combustible matter so wall or join with the fire;
and if there was tinder buist, where, or how gotten?
How had the panel all this leisure and time to set
all thir things in order when he came to the slit?
Was there no din nor crak heard — no* dog to
bark?"

Meldrum was found guilty, condemned, hanged,
and quartered, the quarters being spiked on con-
spicuous places "in example of others to do the
like," as Spalding quaintly says. The belief of the
country, as handed down by tradition, was, that
Frendraught had thus been able to strike another
Q2

228 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

enemy. It will be seen that no evidence against m
him was received— that it was considered an offence
to accuse him. Popular fame charged him, how-
ever, with the murder ; and in the narrative ofFather
Blackwell— not, however, to be much relied on, as
he nourished a strong theological hatred of the
Crichtons— it is asserted that Frendraught kindled
the fire, and stood armed in the court-yard to sky
his victims, should they escape. Frendraught ap-
pears to have endeavoured to propitiate the clergy,
since in the parish church of Forgue there are com-
munion cups and a paten of silver, with the inscrip-
tion: ♦'Giftet to God and his Kirk, by James
Crichton, of Frendraught, 1633."* He appears,
too-, to have re-fitted the interior of the parish
church, and to have carved many pious inscriptions
on the pews. These propitiations were, perhaps,
rendered the more necessary by the recusancy of
his lady, who was born a Roman Catholic, and ap-
pears to have kept the renowned Presbytery of
Strathbogie in continual turmoil. In the Index to
" Extracts from the Presbytery-book of Strath-
bogie," printed by the Spalding Club, the head
" Frendraught, the Lady of," commences thus: u To
be dealt with; promises to hear the word; offers to
go to the church to which her husband goes; out of
* Statistical Account of Scotland, xii, 598.

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 229

the country; gets liberty to attend at Forgue; is
willing to hear the word in any kirk but.Aber-
chirder; to be summoned for her avowed Papistry;
required to subscribe the covenant ; she promises to
consider of it; subscribes it; promises to give up
the detestable ways of Popery or Popish idolatry;"
and so on. The chief complaint against her is for
only occasional, instead of steady attendance at
sermons; and her vindications are sometimes petu-
lant and amusing. She seems, on the whole, to
have shown a pertinacity and passive obstinacy
which exhausted the restless energies of the inqui-
sitorial presbytery, who, after declaring her to be
44 pertinax," appear in the end to have been obliged
to content themselves with very general assurances
of conformity, which they seem to have known
that she did not follow. On one of the occasions in
which her case is brought on, her husband applies
to the presbytery to allow him a tutor of " good
life and conversation," and given to "frequent
exercises," for the instruction of his children; as if
he desired to keep the minds of the reverend gentle-
men fixed on something which might weigh against
the lady's heterodoxy.

Frendraught, though he had with a high hand
averted even the pretence of inquiry on the part
of the government, did not go unpunished, whether

230 THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT.

he was guilty or not- There was another power in
Scotland in that day besides the law, which found
him guilty and executed sentence on him. Avoided
and detested by his neighbours, the whole swarm
of mountain freebooters considered his broad acres
their proper prey. Highland rievers seem to have
travelled hundreds of miles for the special purpose
of harrying the lordship of Frendraught. The privy
council records are filled with eloquently distracted
denunciations of them. Thus, on the 1 3th of No-
vember, 1634, certain charges against the Marquis of
Huntly and others commence, " For as muckle as
the lords of secret council are informed that great
numbers of sorners and broken men in the Clan
Gregor, Clan Lachlan, and other broken clans in
Lochabar, Strathdon, Glencoe, Braemarj and other
parts of the Highlands, as also divers of the name
of Gordon, and their dependers and followers in
the country, have this long time, and now lately,
very grievously infested his majesty's loyal subjects
in the north parts, especially the Laird of Fren-
draught and his tenants, by frequent' slaughters,
heirships, and barbarous cruelties committed upon
them, and by ane late treasonable fire-raising within
the said Laird of Frendraught his lands, whereby
not only is all the gentleman's lands laid waste, his
kail yards and bestial spoiled, slain, and mangled,

THE BURNING OF FRENDRAUGHT. 231

some of his servants slain and cruelly demeaned,
but also the haill tenants of his lands have left his
service, and himself, with the hazard of his life, has
been forced to steal away under night, and have
his refuge in his majesty's council." Another
document calls on the sheriffs of the northern
counties to raise the posse comitates, and endeavour
to arrest a set of people with unreadable High-
land names, " on the suspicion that they are the
authors and committers of the late disorders and
insurrections in the north, and of the heirships,
depredations, fire-raising, and other disorders upon
the Laird of Frendraught, his tenants and servants,
whose haill goods they have lifted, laid their lands
waste, and hanged one of the poor tenants on the
gallows of Strathbogie; and with ane high hand of
rebellion they have resolved to make themselves
masters of the said Laird of Frendraught his haill
estate, and to possess themselves therein, and to
keep the same by strength of arms in contempt and
defiance of law and justice, being assisted in their
disorders and rebellious courses by numbers of
broken Highlandmen and others, with whom they
go up and down the country ravaging and oppress-
ing his majesty's good subjects, and especially poor
ministers who have not power to oppose their vio-
lence, and that in so hostile and terrible ane man-

232 THE BURNING OF FBENDBAUGHT.

ner as the like has not been heard at any time here-
tofore."

These "limmers" and " sorners," who also some*
times receive on the present occasion the curious
name of " light horsemen," were of course hanged
in bunches when they could be caught. One of
them — the renowned Gilderoy — has already come
under our notice in the account of the legal con-
flicts with the Clan Gregor. His coadjutors, who
were generally like himself members of " broken
clans," enjoyed a grotesque variety of names —
such as, John Malcolmie, Allaster Mclnneir, Ewin
Macgregor, alias Macawish, John Dow Garr, Neil
Mclnstalker, Ewin Neil McPhadric, Duncan Roy
Darg, &c. The charges against these ruffians range
from the most extensive to the smallest scale of
plunder — from the pillage of houses and the murder
of their inmates, to the kidnapping of stray poultry
— in a ludicrous fashion. In fact, these gentry were
, so light-footed as well as light- fingered, that it
was extremely difficult to get evidence of their
feats; and therefore, any matter, however trifling,
which could be proved, must not be lost sight of in
the general reckoning. We have seen that Gilderoy
was seized by Argyle, the hereditary enemy of the
Macgregors, to whom thanks for this great service
were recorded by the privy council. So weak an

THE BUKNING OP FBBNDBAUGHT. 233

executive as Scotland then had were glad of the aid
even of inferior instruments, and they followed the
policy of setting rogue against rogue. In the ravages
of Frendraught, a certain Finlay McGrimm bore a
part. He was attacked and seized by some Mao
gregors, probably not much more honest than
himself, who brought his head to the table of the
privy council. This august body " finds they
have done good service therein, excusing them
from all crime and offence that may be impute
to them for this cause. Like as the said lords
ordains the bailies of Edinburgh to affix the said
Finlay McGrimm 's head upon the netherbow port;
and the said lords ordain John Earl of Tra-
quair, his majesty's depute treasurer, to deliver to
the party, bearer and in-bringer of McGrimm's
head, the sum of a hundred merks, in satisfaction
of his hazard and charge, and for encouragement of
others cheerfully to go on in the like service in time
coming"

The country had adopted the opinion that the
house of Frendraught were doomed, and it brought
about the event by treating it as being so. The
territory was wasted and depopulated, its owner
was hated and avoided, and in little more than
half a century after the tragedy the family ceased
to exist. At court, however, Frendraught had at

234 THE BURKING OF EBENDBAUGHT.

first the successful side of the conflict. Huntly, who
was charged with the responsibility of the outrages
in the north, and who was suffering in spirit from
the death of his gallant son, had to repair to court in
his old age, and never returned to his castle and his
followers. His latter days have been affectionately
commemorated by the annalist, Spalding, with
whose notice of his redeeming character, the account
of the Frendraught tragedy may be concluded.*

" This mighty marquis was of ane great spirit,
for in time of trouble he was of invincible courage,
and boldly bore down all his enemies triumphantly.
He was never inclined to war or trouble himself,
but by the pride and insolence of his kin was divers
times driven in trouble, whilk he bore through
valiantly. He loved not to be in the laws contend-
ing against any man, but loved rest and quietness
with all his heart, and in time of peace he lived
moderately and temperately in his dyet, and fully
set to building and planting of all curious devices.

* It is curious that of the author of so interesting a book as
the " Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland and in England, 19 .
nothing should be discovered beyond the bare fact that he was
town clerk of Aberdeen. The garrulity of his narrative makes
it extremely valuable. He was an arrant gossip— but a gossip
whose private scandal related to murders and feuds, and whose
public news recorded the greatest of civil wars. The Spalding
Club, named in honour of him, have just worthily printed an
amply annotated edition of his Memorials.

THE BURNING OP FRENDRAUGHT. 235

A well set neighbour in his marches — disposed
rather to give than to take a foot of ground wrong-
ously. He was heard say he never drew sword in
his own quarrel. In his youth a prodigal spender —
in his old age more wise and worldly, yet never
counted for cost in matters of honour. A great
householder — a terror to his enemies, whom, with
his prideful kin, he ever held under great fear, sub-
jection, and obedience. In all his bargains just
and efauld, and never hard for his true debt. He
was mightily annoyed by the Kirk for his religion,
and by others for his greatness, and had thereby
much trouble. His master, King James, loved him
dearly, and he was a good and loyal subject to him
during the king's lifetime. But here at last in his
latter days, by means of Frendraught, he is so per-
secuted by the laws (which he aye studied to hold
in due reverence), that he is compelled to travel
without pity so often to Edinburgh, and now ends*
his days out of his own house, without trial, of the
woful fire of Frendraught — whilk doubtless was
some help to his death also."*

* Memorials, i., 73-4.

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

The study of the witchcraft trials in Scotland*
leaves behind it a frightful intelligence of what
human nature may become. The impression made
by these tough and sometimes drearily formal re-
cords is more dark and dreadful than anything im-
parted by fictitious writing. The difference is as
great as all that lies between what has been and
what might have been. True, these criminal re-
cords, the* dreariest and most methodical of them,
are full of fictions in the history attributed to the
victims — full of fictions more revolting and im-
probable than we can find in imaginative literature,
since the charges against sorcerers and witches are
frequently the productions of low, uncultivated,
and brutal minds ; while the worst specimens of
fictitious literature are illuminated by ,at least a
faint light of civilisation and taste. But there is

v~r/

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 237

one element in these trials which does not partake
of the character of the fictitious — which is altogether
too true ; and this is the evil minds of the prosecu-
tors. Evil minds which, if we look at the whole
mass, are composed of heartless capriciousness— - of
envy, hatred, and malice— of fanatical fury, and of
mere brute cruelty, passing the conception of those
who socially have lived in civilisation, and whose
minds, when straying beyond the social circle, have
lived in literature. It might be a question which
were the worse fate, to be doomed to a belief in
witchcraft, or to live in a country where it is be*
lieved. Assuredly, no demons of the imagination
can be much worse than the demons which super-
stition has made of poor human beings. -

Perhaps other nations can afford as evil a history
to those who rummage among their criminal records.
There are many sources of intelligence little known
beyond the country to which they belong. We
have few such means of examining the darker side
of life in ancient nations as criminal trials afford.
We only know of their historical crimes, or the
accusations on which the great orators were engaged.
If an imperfect Christianity could leave such horrid
scenes to be looked back upon from a more ad-
vanced civilisation, it is easy to believe that an
abundance of horror must have been connected

238 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

with the influence of demon deities, whose fondest
worshippers believed them to possess passions and
propensities, human in their kind, but as much
more intense than those of men as the capacity of
the immortal is beyond that of the mortal. We
know not all that the human heart is capable of;
perhaps it is well that we should not, and that the
vices of past ages should diffuse themselves into
oblivion as the material bodies of those who indulged
in them have been mingled with the dust of the
earth. On this remark it may be asked— why thpn
endeavour to resuscitate the contents of this little
graveyard corner — the witchcraft trials of Scotland?
The answer is, that there is no intention on the
present occasion of endeavouring to give a picture
of the grosser brutalities. It would not be tole-
rated in a work which the public in general are
invited to peruse ; and it would be difficult to adapt
the written language of the present day to such an
object. Few readers will probably desire more
than a general glance at some of the more curious
and fanciful characteristics of the witch belief in
Scotland. Those who desire more, must 'go to the
original sources of information.

And yet, vile as is the moral garbage thickening
round the feet of one who wades through these
sources of instruction, the self-sufficient selfishness

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 239

of our nature might, perhaps, find a satisfaction in
it — the satisfaction that we live under the protect*
ing shadow of the experimental philosophy, which
will not permit the tribunals to hold the crime we
are accused of to be aggravated by being unseen
and unknown ; by being incapable of discovery and
proof, and by being totally inconsistent with the
laws which are seen to govern the material world.
If we were to take certain anarchists of science, whose
motto appears to be credo quia impossibile, at their
word, they would have these chaotic times back
again. But, in truth, they would be as much
frightened if they actually saw them, as a drawing*
room republican at a besieged barricade. They
disport themselves under the strong protection of
advanced science. Inwardly, they know that the
world will not retrograde ; that the onward steps of
science are sure; and that they are perfectly safe
from the realisation of their own doctrines. Hence,
they are sometimes amusingly bold and clamorous;
and their easy off-hand dealing with the super-
natural is like the talk about storms and shipwrecks
by the " gentlemen of England, who live at home
at ease." To enlighten them on the life they would
lead in a world sent back into the chaos of their pro-
fessed opinions, let them read a series of trials for
witchcraft.

240 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

Our Scottish witch is a far more frightful being
than her supernatural' coadjutor on the south
side of the Tweed. She sometimes seems to rise
from the proper sphere of the witch, who is only
the slave, into that of the sorcerer, who is master of
the demon. The English witch is the very perfec-
tion of stupid vulgarity ; and among the most won-
derful things in the whole history of diablery is
this, that men of dignity and position, if not of
learning — that important, country gentlemen, digni-
fied clergy, judges, and privy councillors, should
submit to the conviction that beings so contemptible
and stupid could be objects of alarm to them, and
be admitted to have some power or authority over
their fate. One would have thought that the vil-
lage hag, however humble her position and limited
her views of life, would have had them widened in
their destructivencss, when the prince of the power
of the air selected them as the means of doing his
work. But the old hag's fiendish machinations
cannot go beyond the sphere of her early habits.
She is a terrible enemy to pigs; sometimes inflicts
convulsions on a turkey; possibly arises to the
dignity of afflicting a cow with heavy sickness, or
giving a horse the staggers. She can disturb the
elements it is true, but they go no further in their
wrath than the souring of the beer, or the destruo-

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 241

tion of the butter. She is an inveterate slattern,
managing with an infinite variety of offensive ope*
rations to disturb the equanimity of the tidy, notable
English housewife. Even Ben Jonson's stately blank
verse cannot communicate dignity to her profes-
sional occupations:

" To make ewes cast their lambs— swine eat their farrow,
The housewives' tun not work — nor the milk churn,
Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep,
Get rials of their blood — and when the sea
Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms
Planted about her in the wicked feat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifest."

More picturesque were the spells of the Lady
Fowlis, of the witches of Auldearn, and of that
wild crew, who, after revelling with the devil in
the church of North Berwick, ransacked the sur-
rounding graves for necromantic charms, and then
went to sea in sieves, with the foul fiend as signal-
master to raise a storm for the destruction of the
king as he came from Norway with his bride.

But if the works of darkness have thus, afforded
incidents more gloomily picturesque in our northern
regions, neither the accusers nor the unhappy beings
who arrogated to themselves, or were accused of
supernatural powers, have any more merit in the
picturesqueness of the adjuncts in which they move,
than in creating the vast mountain-ranges, and

vol. i. a

242 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

stormy winds of their country. With one or two ex-
ceptions, their ends are as base, and their means of
accomplishing them as vulgar, as those of the de-
stroyers of butter and enemies of pigs in the south;
and we shall find that some of the Scottish charges
are of as truly household and humble a charac-
ter, though rendered somewhat more grotesque by
northern peculiarities of language and habit.

In a people so far behind their neighbours in
domestic organisation, poor and hardy, inhabiting
a country of mountains, torrents, and rocks, where
cultivation was scanty, accustomed to gloomy mists
and wild storms, every impression must necessarily
assume a corresponding character. Superstitions,
like funguses and vermin, are existences peculiar
to the spot where they appear, and are governed by
its physical accidents. In the well-lighted drawing-
room, we have the latest fashionable quackery; in
the churchyard or the ruined mansion, we have the
pallid spectre; in the stormy mountains, the ghosts
of a traditional gigantic race rise before the tired
wanderer in misty masses. When the benighted tra-
veller is intercepted by a torrent, struggling among
rocks bored into black holes by the cataracts, he
thinks he sees the water-kelpie leering from each
cavern, as he seeks dubiously and nervously a point
where he may venture to cross. On vast treacher-

TRIALS FOB WITCHCBAFT. 243

ous marshes, where the clanger to the belated wan-
derer is not so obvious but is often more formidable,
he is led on by the perfidious will-o'-the-wisp — a
creature of the English fens, of whom no trace can
be found among Scottish superstitions. As gentles
swarm about the putrid flesh of the dead dog, and
bugs inhabit decayed deal, and earwigs shelter them-
selves behind the bark of rotting staves, so the super-
stitions which arise out of intellectual putrescence
vary with the conditions in which they appear —
and thus it is, that the indications of witchcraft in
Scotland are as different from those of the super-
stition which in England receives the same name,
as the Grampian Mountains from Shooter's Hill or
Kennington Common*.

Mr. Charles Knight, in his over-interesting and
pleasant Commentaries on Shakspeare, endeavours
to show that the machinery of the witchcraft scenes
in Macbeth must have been found in a journey
through Scotland; and, unable to discover any ordi-
nary traveller's traces of Shakspeare having been
there, tries to prove it by internal evidence from
the tragedy. Thus he thought he could make out
that the witches in Macbeth are Scottish, not Eng-
lish. From the home market they certainly are
not ; Shakspeare was far too great an artist to make
the domestic nuisance called a witch in the neigh-
E2

244 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

bourhood of Stratford-on-Avon, a material worker
in the ancient revolutions and tragic events of a
kingdom, supposed by all ordinary readers of history
to have been ruled by a line of Oriental monarchs,
who had passed northward from the palaces of their
lathers, the Egyptian Pharaohs, several hundreds of
years before the birth of Christ. Shakspeare would
as readily have made Cassius an alderman, or Mark
Antony the right honourable gentleman, or have
given Cleopatra a starched ruff, — as have set Eng-
lish witches on the blasted heath. In fact, with
the despotism of genius, he suited matters to his will.
The witches in Macbeth are neither Scots nor Eng-
lish, nor are they beings of any other country — they
evidently embody whatever was picturesque, pow-
erful, and worthy of artistic admiration in all the
witch lore that he had read. They partake as much
of the Parcae of the Greeks and the Choosers of the
slain of the Nora mythology, as they do of any
superstition alive in later ages.

" If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,"

looks more like a classical than a northern repre-
sentation. And again :

" Though ye untie the winds and make them war
Against the steeples— though the yeasty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up,"

might be readily enough suggested by the Scottish

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 245

witchcraft scenes. Nothing about them, however,
was at that time to be found in literature, and it is
drawing too distant a conclusion to maintain from
such coincidents that Shakspeare must have wan-
dered in Scotland, and, mixing with the peasantry,
have learned their superstitions, when there were
other more obvious sources whence he might have
drawn his materials. Olaus Magnus, whose pages are
rife with elementary wrath, and all that the hardy
Norsemen endure in sea-storms, pathless glaciers,
and the cold and darkness of the northern winters,
amply delivers himself on the power exercised by
witches and the other servants of Satan over this
dread enginery. The little Latin of the dramatic
sage would be enough to let him into the Bishop of
Upsala's history of wonders; and the same mate-
rials may be traced to many other sources — in a
great measure, even to the Latin poets, in whose
phraseology the bishop in some measure invests his
descriptions.

It is not proposed on this occasion to offer a com-
plete account of the trials for witchcraft in Scotland.
Even if omitting the very offensive portions already
alluded to, it would not perhaps be welcome to the
ordinary reader. Along with much dull, dreary
nonsense, he would have perhaps to complain of
matter which he had already seen in popular litera-

246 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

ture, being reiterated on him. It may not, however, be
uninteresting to those who do not peruse the Scot-
tish criminal records in their native form, to read
a few selected characteristic extracts from them, no
further differing from the original record than in
the modernising of the spelling. Some trials which
took place in Aberdeen in the year 1597, may be
counted a fair enough specimen of this class of
documents. A commission was in that year granted
by the king in council to the provost and bailies of
Aberdeen for the trial of Janet Wishart, spouse to
John Leys S tabular, in Aberdeen; John Leys, her
son, Isobel Cockie, in Kintore, and other persons,
suspected of " witchcraft, sorcery, and other devil-
ish and detestable practices.' 1 * The fate of the ac-
cused persons was deemed a matter of small im-
portance, otherwise the trial would not have been
left in the hands of these respectable magistrates —
but the accusations are not thence the less charac-
teristic. A few extracts from them follow. The
time of the first charge is day dawn, or " the greik-
ing of the day." Then did Janet Wishart meet a
mariner intending to go on board his vessel, in this
wise:

" Thou the said Janet Wishart returning from
the blockhouse and Futtie, where thou had been
* Miscellany of the Spalding Club, i, 84 ef «?.

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 247

consultant! with the devil, thou pursuing Alex-
ander Thomson, mariner, coming forth of Aber-
deen to his ship, ran betwixt him and Alexander
Fidler's door under the Castle-hill, as swift, as
appeared to him, as ane arrow could be shot forth
of a bow — going betwixt him and the sun then
cast thy cantrips* in his way. At the whilk mo-
ment the said Alexander took an extreme fear and
trembling, where through he was forced to return
home unpassed to his ship, took bed, and lay by
the space of ane month fast bedsick, so that nane
believed his life ; the ane half of the day rosten in
his body as if he had been rosten in an oven with
an extreme burnen drought so that he could never
be satisfied of drink ; the other half of the day
melting away his body with an extraordinar cold
sweat And the said Alexander Thomson, know-
ing that thou had casten this kind of witchcraft on
him, send to thee his own wife with Catherine
Crawford, sharply boasting and threatening thee,
that unless thou incontinently remedied him then,
that he would cause burn thee — thou sent with the
said Alexander's wife and the said Catherine Craw-

* This word puzzles the philologists. Dr. Jameson, in his
Scottish dictionary, says: "I have sometimes been disposed
to think that it might he a sea term, or one borrowed from
gipsy language, from cant, to throw or cast, or turn over,
and raup, or rope, as alluding, perhaps, to the tricks of jug-
glery."

248 TRIALS FOB WITCHCBAFT.

ford certain beer and other thy drugs to drink —
after the whilk reproof and receipt of thy drugs,
the said Alexander daily mended, and returned
again to his wonted health."

Certain scholars or students see the witch coming
out of Adam Mair's grain-field at two o'clock of
the morning, whereon they give information to his
wife of the suspicious event:

" And thou then instantly being revealed to the
wife of the said Adam, thou in thy fury answered
and said to the said scholars, * Well have ye schemed
me — I shall gar the best of you repent,' and ere
four afternoon that thou should gar as many wonder
at them as should see them. Upon the same day,
betwixt two and three hours afternoon, the said
scholars passed to the old watergang in the links to
wash them, and after they had once washen them-
selves and dried again, the said John Leslie and
Johnston took a rink or race beside the water-
gang, and most desperately, through thy witchcraft
casten on them, ran in the midds of the water-
gang and drowned themselves — and thereby, thou,
as thou promised, murdered them."

" Item, these twenty years last by-past, thou con-
tinually, and nightly upon the night, after eleven
hours at even, while as thy husband and servants
pass to their bed and take rest, then thoti puts on
nightly ane great fire, holds the same on the haill

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 249

night, and sits thereat thyself using thy witchcraft
— altogether contrarious to the nature of well-living
persons. And such nights as thou puts naut on
fire, then thou gangs out of thy ane house — remains
therefrom the haill night where thou pleases."

" Item, thou and thy daughter, Violet Leys,
desired thy woman to gang with thy daughter at
twelve hours at even to the gallows, and cut down
the dead man hanging thereon, and take a part of
all his members from him, and burn the dead corps
— whilk thy servant would not do, and therefore
then instantly thou put her away."

" Item, nine years since or thereby, Kelman,
wife to John Taylor, then being in thy service in
time of harvest, gangen to Gordon's mills to grind
corn to the hooks with thee, a part being ground
in the night, thou and she returning after midnight,
passed out of the common way, passing through
the links, the gate to the gallows, whereat the
woman was greatly afraid and refused to gang —
yet thou urged her nought to fear in thy company,
so that she was forced to come forward where thou
brought her to the gallows, and show her that thou
would learn her ane lesson whilk would do her
good all her days — and ane dead man being hang-
ing there bade her hold his foot, while she cutted
off a part of all his members— whereat the woman
was stricken with such fear, fell dead, and refused to

250 TRIALS POR WITCHCRAFT.

meddle with such thing. Whereupon, thou for-
cibly straited her by her oath never to reveal, or
else thou would instantly gar her die."

The following items bear on the witches' com*
mand over the elements:

" Within these two years certain honest women
within this burgh, with Andrew Rait mariner's
wife, came to thee to buy malt, to whom thou
answered that thou had nane winnowed, but
desired them to remain and they should have — in-
continent. Who answered thee that there was no
wind to winnow any malt, and thou said thou
should get wind enough to do thy turn. Imme-
diately thereafter thou took ane coal of fire, and
divided it, the one half thou put in the one door
and the other half in the other, and said thy ori-
sons thereon. Thereafter there came wind enough
in at thy doors, whereas there was none in the
field*

" Thou art indicted and accused for practising
of thy witchcraft in laying of the wind and making
of it to become calm and louden, a special point
teached to thee by thy master Satan, whilk thou
did in this form: taking of ane beatle in the craig

* There was for some time a superstitious prejudice in Scot-
land against winnowmg-machin&, as a presumptuous inter-
ference with the elements — but superstitions do not hold out
long in the north against palpable and profitable improve-

TEIAL8 FOB WITCHCRAFT. 251

toun of Lunfanan,* and hanging up of the beatle
by ane string or thread, and whispering thereon thy
devilish orisons by a certain space, through the
whilk thy devilish witchcraft so used by thee, the
wind — that blew loud, the whilk no man for the
greatness and vehemency thereof could hold his
feet upon the ground — became calm and low."

The charge of bringing on a sickness by witch
cantrips is frequently repeated almost in the terms
already cited. Intervals of burning heat and icy

* This was a tolerably well-selected place for witchcraft
machinations with the elements, from its connexion with the
fate of Macbeth. But if Shakspeare had known of the his-
tory of this laying of the storm, it might have come accompa-
nied with historical intelligence Undermining the chief events
of his tragedy. There are few things about Macbeth, except
indeed his connexion with this remote spot, which are not very
vague and dubious. It is questioned if he was a Yery good or
a yery bad man. It is questioned if he murdered Duncan, or
if in his person he slew the usurper of his wife's throne in open
battle. There is Hfctle doubt, however, that death overtook him
at Lunfanan. All the older chroniclers state it distinctly, and
it is a remote unknown spot, unlike the conspicuous places
with which tradition generally associates strange stories of the
death of kings. Wyntoun, in his vernacular, gives all the
stages of the chase across the Grampians, and then
" This Macbeth slewe thai than
Into the wode of Lunfanan
And his hewyd thai struk off there/'

To this day, on a bleak mountain-side in that remote district,
a grey heap of stones is known by the name of Cairn Beth,
a name preserved without reference to any tradition about the
monarch's fate: throughout Scotland, tradition has followed
Shakspeare by making his death take place at Dunsinane.

252 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

coldness, or their coexistence, in different parts of
the body, are among the perpetually-recurring fea-
tures. The patient is said sometimes to decline
like a lighted white candle, and an intolerable
thirst or " drouth," not to be slaked by any amount
of any kind of liquor, is an almost invariable fea-
ture. The charges then pass for a long way through
very sublunary and material matters, such as the
destruction of brewsts of ale, or the bewitching of
clothes with an element of decay, which makes
them wear out long before the owner had calculated
on the necessity of renewing his garments, and
sensibly affects his temper. One long charge relates
to a leg of roast mutton, whence the witches dug
out handfuls of flesh, distributing the same with
baleful and deadly influences. Suddenly the charges
which are of the earth earthy, take a turn to the
wild aerial diablery which will be found in the fol-
lowing fragments:

" Thou confesses that the devil thy master, whom
thou terms Christsunday, and supposes to be an
angel and God's godson — albeit he has a thraw by
God, and sways to the Queen of Elphin* — is raised

* In the Record "hes a thraw by God and swyis to the
Qaeen of Elphen." It may be put thus, with a great dimi-
nution in the power of the expression— he has a tendency
against the Almighty and towards the Queen of Elphin. The
extreme irreverence as well as logical absurdity of such a form
of accusation are sufficiently obvious.

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 253

by the speaking of the word Benedicite, and is laid
again by taking of a dog under thy left oxter
(shoulder) in the right hand, and casting the same
in his mouth, and speaking the word Maikpebtis, (?)
and that Christsunday bit a mark in the third finger
of thy right hand, whilk thou has yet to show.
Suchlike thou affirms that the Queen of Elphin has a
grip of all the craft, but Christsunday is the good-
man, and has all power under God, and that thou
kerjs sundry dead men in their company, and that
the king that died at Floden and Thomas Rymour
-is there."*

* The fate of James IV. and the battle of Floden were then
a history of only fifty-five years old ; but the superstition among
the common people, of the Scottish monarch wandering in elf-
land, shows how much the catastrophe of Floden was considered
a national calamity, and how affectionately the warrior-monarch
was remembered, even in the remotest parts of the Scottish
Lowlands. The reference to Thomas Rymour, or Thomas of
Erceldoun, might seem far more remarkable to persons not. ac-
quainted with the traditions of the North, since it refers to a
person whose traditionary fame must have been a matter of
greater antiquity at the period of the battle of Floden than the
battle of Floden is to us of the nineteenth century. But the
fame of the prophet-poet seems to have been ever strongest in
Aberdeenshire, some 200 miles from the Border district, with
which all that is known of his history is associated. Thomas
was, however, one of those beings whose names seem to be syl-
labled by airy tongues, and who, like the Sacroboscos, Erigenas,
and Duns Scotuses, are claimed by many countries. Wide,
however, as the popularity of his name has been, the Bymer
seems to have been always considered a Scot. Conrad Gesner
says in his "Bibliotheca," some forty years before these Aber-

254 TBIAL8 FOB WITCHCBAFT.

" Item, upon the rood-day in harvest, in this pre-
sent year, whilk fell on a Wednesday, thou confesses
and affirms thou saw Christsunday come out of the
snow in likeness of 3 stag, and that the Queen of
Elphin was there and others with her, ryding upon
white hacknies, and they came to the Binhill and
Binlocht, where they use commonly to convene,
and that all they who convenes with them, kisses
Christsunday and the Queen of Elphin, &c, as
thou did thy sel£ and if thou got leave to have
keeped the convention on All-Hallow even last was*
thou would have told of all them that should have
been there in company with them."

" Item, thou affirms that the elves have shapes
and clothes like men, and that they will have fair
covered tables, and that they are but shadows, but
are starker* nor men, and that they have playing

deen trials, " Thomas Leirmont, vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus,
editit Ehythmica quaedum, et ob id Ehythmicus apud Anglos
cognominatus."

* Stronger. Stark is still used north of the Grampians. It is
one of many north-eastern terms, which, while unknown in the
south, are not only traceable to a Teutonic continental root, but
are identically the same with words used in Germany. la
Aberdeenshire there ' are many terms obsolete in "Enfljajntd, and
even in the south of Scotland, which are to be found in use in
Germany, but a still greater number which are in familiar use in
Low Dutch. It would be a curious piece of philological work to
find out how many of them, if any, are Anglo-Saxon, deserted by
England and southern Scotland. It is a curious enough inci-

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 255

and dancing when they please — and also that the
queen is very pleasant and will be old and young
when she pleases."

" Item, thou affirms that thou can take away a
cow's milk when thou pleases, and thou promised
to Alexander Simpson to do the same."

" Item, thou grants and affirms that the fruit of
the corns is taken away by stripping of the crops of
the straw, and casting it among the rest of the corn,
by saying these words: ' The dirt to thee, and the
crops to me,' nine sundry times — and if the plough-
irons be dipped in lax water the oxen will not run
away."

"Item, that at the day of judgment, the fire
will burn the water and the earth and make all
plain, and that Christsunday will be casten in the
fire because he deceives worldlings men. And this
year to come shall be a dear year ; and that there
shall be twice seven good years thereafter. And
this intelligence thou had from Christsunday thy
master, whilk is plain witchcraft and devilry.
Like as thou affirms and allows plainly — if thou
look at a man's hand thou shall tell him what ane
wife he shall get,"

dental circumstance, that though a thoroughly northern term
occasionally occurs in these records of witchcraft trials, yet the
language of the record is on the whole less peculiarly Scottish
than the parliamentary privy council and other metropolitan
records of the same period.

256 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

" Item, thou grants the elves will make thee
appear to be in a fair chamber — and yet thou shall
find thyself in a moss in the morn; and that they
will appear to have candles, and light, and swords,
whilk will be nothing else but dead grass and straw
— amongst whom thou art not afraid to gang, as
thou frequently all thy day has used their company
and society."

" Item, thou bidds lay the harrows on the land
before the corn be brought forth, and hold off the
crows until ane ridge be broken — for the crows are
witrif (very cunning) beasts; and the devil will
come in their likeness; and bidds say an oration —
whilk thou has perqueir — nine sundry times, and
that being done, the corns shall come safe to the
barn that year. Suchlike, thou affirms the crows
will bring a stone from one country to another to
gar their birds deck — whilk intelligence thou has
of Christsunday, and is plain devilry and witchcraft
— whilk thou can nought deny."

" Item, thou affirms that at the day of judgment
Christsunday will be notary to accuse every man,
and ilk man will have his own dittay* written
in his own book to accuse himself, and also that the
godly will be severed from the wicked, whilk was
revealed to thee by the devil thy master."

* The -equivalent, in the Scottish vernacular, of indictment*
as a derivative from vndictamenta*

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 25*1

Though these reckless fancies do sometimes touch
the border of poetry, there would certainly not
be found enough of imagination in them to make
them worth reading or thinking of, were it not
that they were the substantial accusations raised
against human beings, on which they were, in this
country of well-administered justice, accused, tried
with or without torture, condemned to death, and
burned in a large fire fed with fagots and tar. In
the perusal of these documents, it can hardly fail to
be noticed how utterly repulsive the very terms of
the accusations are to the spirit of Christianity.
This may be counted a vague term; and it is more
distinct to say that the official persons who drew
out these charges, had little notion of the doctrines
of Christianity as they are now followed, in an age
whose greater civilisation is the companion of its
higher development of religion. The thorough mis-
understanding of the Christian doctrines in these
charges — and the same thing is abundantly apparent
in others — is a matter that must be left to the
reader's judgment. The doctrinal discussion of it
would not be appropriate to such an occasion as
this, nor would it be adapted to the writer's know-
ledge or pursuits. The general antagonism, how-
ever, to Christianity, as it is now generally believed
in, of the whole scheme of a belief in witchcraft,

VOL. I. 8

256 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

and of course of all the accusations in which it is
embodied, forms an important matter in viewB
historical and soda], which even people not versed
in theological learning are entitled to take up. It
might be the more satifactory for laymen to discuss
it, but there are few ecclesiastical bodies of long
standing, the predecessors of which have not em-
brewed their hands in blood in the pursuit of the
old barbarous and unchristian notions on witch-
craft and other superstitions. Churches do not like
to find failings in their ancient foundations ; and
theologians will not readily endeavour to prove that
those whom they represent by apostolic descent, or
otherwise* were bad Christians. There can be no
-doubt, however, to the ordinary critical reader of
witch trials; that all the belief on which they pro-
ceeded is characteristic rather of the creed of Zoro-
aster, or of those who made human deities endowed
with more or less of human wickedness and weak-
ness, than of the religion of the New Testament. In
fact, it probably would not be difficult to show
historically that the wbole of this class of super-
stitions is a remnant of heathenism, running like a
disturbing vein into Christianity. Its occasional
identification with classical and northern super-
stitions has been noticed already, and may receive
further attention as we go on. The classical eo-

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 269

incidences, however, are the mere forms in which
the clergy and the lawyers dressed their narratives.
The heathen worship and superstitions of the
northern nations were still practically alive in the
witch revels or Sabbaths, which have descended
from the customs of Valhalla, and are told nearly in
the same terms by Olans Magnus, and by the con-
coctors of the Aberdeen indictments.

With these casual comments to draw attention
to the peculiar character of the charges, a few more
extracts from these singular accusations are offered:

11 Thou art indicted and accused for being with
Janet Wood, goodwife, of Ktmurchie, in winter last
past, in her house of Pitmurchie, she and her hus-
band lying in ane chamber, and thou lying in the
same chamber in ane bed — none being in the house
but the three; the devil thy master came to thee,
and then by his instigation and thy enchantment,
the goodwife being lying sick, the parpan wall of
the house shook and trembled and made such ane
din and noise as the same had been hailely fallen,
and there-through the goodwife and the goodman
was so afraid they could nought be contained within
their beds for fear and dread that the wall should
fall on them — albeit, there fell not ane stone
thereof. And this thou did, being enspired by thy
master as said is — and this thou confessed the shaking
s2

260 TBIALS FOB WITCHCBAFT.

and tumbling of the wall, alleging only it was dogs
•and cats that ran on the wall."

" Item, at this same night that the wall trembled
and shook by thy devilish enchantments, the devil
thy master appeared to thee in the said goodwife of
Pitmurchie's chamber, where the goodman himself
-was lying, in the form of ane four-footed beast, and
specially like ane futret, and sometime like ane cat,
and ran about the said goodman of Pitmurchie's
bed-clothes where he was lying, whereby he was so
terrified that he cried, and thou speired at him what
moved or troubled him — and he answered thee again,
4 1 trow the deil is in this house for I can nought
lie in my bed for fear/ and he incontinently rose,
lighted ane candle to see if there were any cat, dog,
futret, or other four-footed beast about the house-—
who finding the doors and windows all fast could
see nothing. To whom thou answered and said
then again, * Goodman, be godlie; if ye have tane
any man's geer, restore the same again, and then
the devil will nought appear.' "

This injunction was supposed to be a solemn
mockery of the scriptural exhortations to penitence
and the functions of the clergy. The tormenting
of their victims by the presence of animals, we shall
find to be among the most ordinary of the witch
impeachments. Its phenomena are among the

TBIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 261;

most easily resolvable by ordinary natural agency,
in the habits of the animals, — domestic, such as cats,
or wild, such as rats, — which frequent houses; and,
what cannot thus be accounted for, maybe resolved
by the phenomena of dyspeptic dreams. The fol-
lowing act of vengeance is also characteristic of the
ordinary accusations against these poor wretches:

"In June last or thereby, thou being entering
into the kirkyard of Kincardine, gangen in at the
kirk door thereof, umwhile Alexander Burnet, son
to James Burnet in Larguie, ane young able man,
meeting thee, and seeing that thou was going to
offer thyself to bide ane trial for witchcraft, he
knowing by open voice and common fame that thou
wast ane witch, said merrily to thee, ' Get fire to
the witch carting/ Then thou answered the said
Alexander, being instructed at the present by thy
master Satan, * Thou shall be first drowned ere I
be burned;' and true it is that then thy dittay being
obscured* by the reason aforesaid, continually from
that forth, the said Alexander being in his flower,f
and coming but to his ability, by thy witchcraft
and sorcery then casten on him, never ceased till

* Dittay obscwredr— indictment hidden. One of the charges
against this woman— which can scarcely be called a super-
natural one— was bribing the clerks of court with ten merks to
" obscure and extract the dittay."

t The flower of his age.

262 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

that he riding in company with the Laird of Muchab
and divers other gentlemen, in the water of Don,
to wash their horses in ane hot summer's day, the
said Alexander drowned, and the rest was safe —
and so that inspiration whilk thou had of thy
master the devil came verily and truly to pass and
took effect, in that he first drowned before thou
was burnt for thy witchcraft. And to verify this
to be true, ere ever any ward came to Lunfanan,
where thou dwell, of the drowning of the said
Alexander Burnet, or ever any man or woman in
these parts knew or heard thereof, thou passed to
Kincragie, and said to the goodman, goodwife, and
their family, " I have gotten my heart's desire and
wish upon one— that is Alexander Burnet, who is
drowned before I be burned.' "

The next series of extracts in which we shall in-
dulge are by no means of so homely and natural a
cast, but bring us again into the darker recesses of
Satan's peculiar dominion:

" Thou art indicted and accused for being in.
company and society with thy master the devil, of
whom thou learned all thy sorcery, at ane dance,
where there was with thee eight other persons at
ane grey stane at the foot of the hill of Craigleuche,
where thou and they was under the conduct of thy
master the devil, dancing in ane ring, and he play-

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 263

ing melodiously upon ane instrument, albeit invi-
sible to you," &c

44 Upon All-hallow even last by-past, at twelve
hours in the night, or thereby, thou comes to the
fish-cross of this burgh, under the conduct of Satan
thy master, playing before thee on his form of in-
struments — and there in company with thy devilish
companions and faction transformed in other like-
ness — some in hares, some in cats, and some in other
similitudes, ye all danced about the fish-cross and
meal-market for a long space. Of the whilk dance,
umwhile William Leys was ringleader, whilk he
confessed himself before his death — and that thou
wm ane of the number."

The passages that follow begin charges of the
same character, but the scene gradually shifts to
superstitions of another class:

" Thou confessed that the devil thy master,
whom thou terms Christsunday, caused thee dance
sundry times with him, and with our lady — who,
as thou says, was a fine woman clad in- a white
walicot, and sundry others of Christsunday's ser-
vants with thee, whose names thou knows not, and
that the devil played on his form of instruments
veiy pleasantly unto you."

" Item, thou confessed that thou can charm a
sword in such sort, that the owner thereof shall not

264 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

get his blood drawn, nor reap any skaith so. long as
he has that sword — whilk charm, as thou confessed,
is after this form: To cause the man that owns the
sword, take it naked in his right hand and kiss the
guard thereof, and then make three crosses in the
gait therewith, in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost — and Christsunday. And this lesson
thou confesses thou learned of thy master Christ-
sunday."

" Item, thou confessed that thou bade William
Innes of Edingeith, take the cross of a rowan tree,
and put on his right shoulder and turn him thrice
about, and beseech him to the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, and Christsunday — and no evil would
dare upon him."

" Item, thou confessed that thou could help sick
cattle by saying an oration to them, whilk thou
repeated this day in the kirk, wherein there was a
part in these words: 'Nine times God swarbed
between me and them,' and by casting south
running water on them, in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, and Christsunday, whereby
thou would recover their sickness."

" Item, thou confessed thou washed James Cheyne
in Pein, twenty days since, or thereby, with south
running water in his own house, and caused his
own hire-woman bring in the water unspoken, and

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 265

when lie was washen therewith, thou caused the
spid woman cast it in the same place where she took
ij; out, and bade her keep the same from the cattle."

" Item, on Sunday last thou confessed the devil
thy master, whpm thou calls Christsunday, came to
thee in the house of the said James Cheyne, about
twelve hours of the night, in the likeness of a black
stag, and bade thee be his servant, with whom thou
consulted a long space"

" Item, thou confessed, in presence of Mr. Thomas
Leslie, sheriff depute, and sundry others, that the
devil appeared to thee within these eighteen days
or thereby, whom thou calls thy God, within the
said James Cheyne's pantry, about one hour in the
night, and appeared to thee in ane great man's
likeness with silken habiliments, with ane white
candle in his hand, and then gave thee thy injunc-
tions to use thy devilish practices and services."

Such are a few of the more remarkable incidents
and characteristics selected out of a very large mass
of matter. Besides the portions which have been
deemed curious enough to be set down as they are
found in the original documents, a minute investi-
gator might find embedded in uninteresting verbiage
or tedious details, little incidental matters which are
curious, and might be important to psychological
inquirers, but are not sufficiently continuous and

266 TRIALS FOB T^ITCHCRiuFT.

distinct to be interesting in a work chiefly of a
narrative character like the present. Classification
and arrangement do not readily apply to matter*
of so vagrant a character as deposed superstitions.
They are not, like an accepted science, where the
dropping of an insignificant portion, like breaking
a wheel of a watch, disturbs the whole economy;
they are rather like a mountain landscape, where
we desire the lights and shadows, the srlarkle of the
waters, the green of the forests, and the general
hue and character of nature as it is there to be
found. Still, in the same arena there are other
workers — geologists investigating the strata; bota-
nists, agricultural chemists, trigonometrical sur-
veyors, and so forth. The field opened up by these
extracts does not seem promising, but to inquirers
into psychological and even physiological matters,
these trials for witchcraft, occupying upwards of m
hundred very closely-printed quarto pages, may
afford valuable raw material.

Before leaving these curious records, however, it
k scarcely more than fair to the reputation of the
whole system of witch-belief, which in the extracts
hitherto indulged in has a wildly capricious, fantas-
tic, and malicious character, to quote one passage,
illustrative of those neighbourly services which seem
sometimes to have been either begged or bought

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 267

from these witches, and sometimes to have been
exacted by harsh threats of denunciation and
punishment. We have here the method of reclaim-
ing a bewitched mill; and it may be important to
those who consider such objects as matter of scientific
inquiry, instead of general curiosity, to find a case
in point, showing that when one witch lays on a
spell, it is necessary to have the services of another
for its removal; just as a miller of the present day,
having found that a lawyer, by some mystical process
full of hard and incomprehensible words, had stopped
his mill and laid an embargo on his property, finds
that he must employ another lawyer for the removal
of these insidious restraints or spells. Christian
Reid is indicted as a notorious witch and sorcerer:
" Thou came to Walter Innes, miller, at the mill of
Federet, he being standing at the said mill, and said
to him, 4 Ye are bewitched, and your mill also, and
if you will give me any geer, I will get you remedy
both for thee and for the other. And as to your
mill, if you satisfy me, I shall get her remedied
presently at home ; but as to yourself, yon man gang
forty miles ere you get your own health.' And the
said Walter Innes answered thee, ' I care not so
much for my own disease as I care for my mill;
and if thou presently will remeid my mill, I will
recompense thee therefor/ And this thou canst

268 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

nought deny, for thou hast confessed this point
already in the kirk of this burgh, before the provost,
ministry, and divers others.

" Item, thou art indicted as a manifest witch and
sorcerer, in so far that in the month of March last
by-past, fourteen days or thereby before pasche last,
after thou had spoken in this form with the said
Walter Innes, thou passed to one Catherine Gerard,
spouse to Crawford in Ironside, and daughter to
one Hellie Pennie, that was burnt for witchcraft
before in Slains; who, as thou alleged, desired
thee to speak the forementioned words to the said
Walter, and said to the said Catherine, * I have
spoken with Watt Innes, who says he will give
some of his geer to remeid his mill;' and the said
Catherine answered thee, ' Well then, if so be ye
must do a little thing for me at this time — and I
will do as meikle for you again — whilk is this: Te
shall gang to the mill of Federet, and take up a
little sand at the west cheek of the north door of
the said mill, and cast the same upon the stones and
wheels, in the name of God and Christsunday, and
then the mill shall be in the old manner.' And
upon this, thou immediately thereafter, at the di-
rection of the said Catherine, passed to the said mill
and did as aforesaid; and then the said mill, whilk
of before, by thy witchcraft, and by the witchcraft

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 269

and devilry of the said Catherine, was unable to
gang, and the wheels whereof could not be put
about by eight men, ground after her old form, and
made good meal and sheeling.

" Item, &c., thou confesses, thyself, that albeit
Catherine Gerard cast on the witchcraft on the mill,
she could not take it off herself, but it behoved
another witch to take it off, for she could nought
take off the witchcraft which she cast on. And
therefore, seeing thou took off that devilry and in-
chantment off that mill by thy devilry and witch-
craft, thou canst nought be clensit from witchcraft,
for none can take it off but witches."

Should these incoherences — some of them so wild
and demoniacal, others so homely — seem to the
reader a semi-jocular narrative, that never can have
been connected with serious results, there is a black
account in the records of the receipt and expenditure
of the funds of the good city of Aberdeen, telling
another tale. The clerk makes up a* statement of
" the disbursements made by the compter, at com*
mand and by notice of the ordnance of the provost,
bailies, and council, in the burning and sustentation
of the witches." Putting the sustentation after the
burning is not logical, but it is evident that the
civic officer did not put himself to the trouble of
reflecting that the one expense naturally preceded

270 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

the other. Among the earliest of the items is one
that mighty one would think, have even made a
civic dignitary shudder — at all events, it would not
make its appearance at die present day in an account-
book, in terms so repulsively expressive. A sum of
ten shillings is charged " for trailing of Monteith
through the streets of the town in ane cart (who
hanged herself in prison), and for cart hire and
eirdiiig of her (earthing or burying her)."

To the account of Janet Wishart and Isabel
Cockie, there are set forth the following significant
items:

For twenty loads of pests, to born them . 40

For onebollof coalls 23

For four tar-barrels 26 6

Tor fire and iron tomb 16 8

For a stalk and dressing of it . . . 16
For four fathom of tows (ropes) . ..40

For carrying the peats, coals, andbarreb to Hie mil 13 4

To John Justice, for their execution . . . 13 4

The Dean of Guild of the town gained for him-
self golden opinions from his fellow-citizens, and
was voted a pecuniary reward for his affectionate
attention to their interests, in ridding them of
witches. It was the function of this important
officer, like the Edile of the Romans, to look after
the public edifices, and protect &e citizens from
injury by ruinous buildings. As a clerk of works
would deem that he did service in the present day

TBIAL3 TOR WITCHCiUFT. 271

by ridding the establishment under his management
of tugs or rate, so it seems to have* been deemed
an act of zealous official duty, and good neighbour-
ship, in the inspector of streets and public buildings
to look after the burning of the witches. Hence, on
the 21et of September, 1597, the provost, bailies,
and council, considering the faithfulness shown by
William Dun, the Dean of Guild, in the discharge
of his duty, " and, besides this, his extraordinarily
taking pains in the burning of the great number of
the witches burnt this year, and on the four prates,
and bigging of the port upon the brig of Dee, re-
pairing of the Gney Friars Kirk and steeple thereof,
and thereby has been abstracted from his trade of
merchandise continually since he was elected to
the said office" — he is allowed a gratuity of forty-
seven pounds out of the penalties levied cm those
who catch salmon out of season.*

Among the expenses of the occasion was that of
building a palisade to keep off the crowd who
thronged to "the great number of the witches
burnt this year," and the account intimates that it
was broken down through the eager pressure of the
mob. In the good old times, such holocausts oc-
curred at intervals like storms or inundations. When

* Editor'* Preface to Miscellany of the Spalding Club,

272 TRIALS TOR WITCHCRAFT.

the moral tempest of hatred and bigot ferocity was
sweeping by, then was the time for all who had
some old wrong to avenge, or who had been
nourishing in their bosoms some well-matured
hatred, to seize the opportunity and strike theft:
enemies ; then was the time for the strong, the
fierce, and the unscrupulous, to triumph in the
bloody struggle, and the weak to be trodden in the
earth. And, in such a conflict of utter selfish
ferocity, unlighted by any ray of generosity,
chivalry, heroism, or even mercy, it is not surpris-
ing that we should find, when we analyse the fate
of the stragglers, that men strong in person, in skill,
and in social condition, should be the victors, and
that aged women should be the victims.

These matters happened, as we have seen, in
Aberdeenshire, just at the close of the sixteenth
century. Sixty-four years later, there was another
and similar outbreak in the parish of Auldearn, in
the neighbouring county of Nairn. The documents
which we possess relating to the Aberdeen cases
are chiefly the accusations — those which relate to
the Auldearn witches are singularly enough their
confessions — a fact, the import of which will have
to be afterwards noticed. There is a remarkable
similarity to each other in these sets of instances;
but the Auldearn witches were, as we shall find,

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 27S

the more heteroclite of the two, and they had
far greater lyrical capacities, indulging themselves
abundantly in poetry and song.* According to the
method adopted with their predecessors, some cha-
racteristic fragments from these lengthy statements
are here strung together. In the present instance*
the impression thus derived of the original will not
be a very false one, as it is in many places frag-
mentary and imperfect. These women then confess*
in the presence of the sheriff of the county, the
clergyman of the parish, and a worshipful assembly
of country gentlemen, such things as these :

" As I was going betwixt the towns of Drum-
duin and the heads, I met the devil, and there
covenanted in a manner with him; and I promised
to meet him in the night-time in the kirk of Aul-
dearn, whilk I did. And the first thing I did there
that night, I denied my baptism, and did put the
one of my hands to the crown of my head and the
other to the sole of my foot, and then renounced all,
betwixt my two hands, over to the devil. He was
in the reader's desk, and a black book in his hand.

* The Confessions of the Auldearn witches — a document
almost unrivalled in interest in this department of inquiry —
may he found in the Appendix to Mr. PitcairnV Collection
(iii., 602). A portion of it had been shown to Sir Walter Scott
before the publication of Mr. Fitcairn's work, and is referred to
in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.

VOL. I. T

274 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

Margaret Brodie, in Auldearn, held me up to the
devil to be baptised of him; and he marked me on
the shoulder, and sacked out my blood at that
mark and spouted it on his hand, and sprinkling it
on my head, said, ' I baptise thee, Janet, in my own
name. 9 "

" John Taylor and Janet Breadhead, his wife,
Ac, and I myself, met in the kirkyard of Nairn,
and we raised an unchristened child out of its
grave, and at the end of Bradly's corn-field land,
just opposite the mill of Nairn, we took the said
child, with the nails of our fingers and toes, pickets
of all sorts of grain, and blaids of kail, and hacked
them all very small together, and put part thereof
among the muckheaps of Bradly's lands, and thereby
took away the fruit of his corns, &c, and we parted
it among two of our covins (covies or companies).
When we take corn at Lammas, we take but about
two sheaves when the corns are fall, and two stocks
of kail or thereby, and that gives us the fruit of the
corn-land, or kailyard, where they grow."

" When we go to any house we take meat and
drink * * * we put besoms in our beds with
our husbands till we return to them again. We
were in the Earl of Murray's house in Darnaway,
and we got enough then, and did eat and drink of
the best, and brought part with us. We went in

TRIALS FOE WITCHCRAFT. 275

at the windows. I had a little horse, and would

cry ' HORSE AND HATTOCK IN THE DEVIL'S

name,'* and when any see these straws in a whirl-

* The editor of these Confessions notices a carious confirma-
tion froin Aubrey's Miscellanies of this form of northern en-
chantment. He preserves a tradition how a Lord Duflus, who
lived near this same Auldearn, while walking in his paternal
fields was suddenly swept away, and was found in the King of
France's wine-cellar, with a silver cup in his hand. According
to the account of the family tutor who wrote to Aubrey, on
being brought before the king and questioned as to his identity,
this Scots lord " told his name, his country, and the place of his
residence; and that on such a day of the month—which proved
to be the day immediately preceding— being in the fields, he
heard the noise of a whirlwind, and of voices crying * horse and
hattock' (this is the word which the fairies are said to use when
they remove from any place), whereupon he cried ( hobbe and
hattock' also, and was immediately caught up and transported
through the air by the fairies to that place. Where, after he
had drunk heartily he fell asleep, and before he awoke, the rest
of the company were gone, and had left him in the posture
wherein he was found. It is said that the king gave him the
cup which was found in his hand and dismissed him." The
person who communicated this story to Aubrey had made
further inquiries in the Duflus family, and found, that "there
is yet an old silver cup in his lordship's possession still, which
is called ( the fairy cup,' but has nothing engraven upon it ex-
cept the arms of the family." The tutor who communicated
these traditions, had his own story of personal experience to
tell. It happened when he was a schoolboy at Forres,
but there is his own authority for the statement, that he was
" not so young but that he had years and capacity both to ob-
serve and remember that which fell out" What fell out was
this: " He and his schoolfellows were, upon a time, whipping
their tops in the churchyard before the door of the church.
Though the day was calm, they heard a noise of a wind, and, at
some distance, saw the small dust begin to arise and turn round;
which motion continued advancing till it came to the place

t2

276 TRIALS FOB WITCHCBAPT.

wind and do not sanctify themselves, we may shoot
them dead at our pleasure. Any that are shot by
us, their souls go to heaven — but their bodies re-
main with us, and will fly as horses to us, as small
as straws."

" I was in the Downie hills, and got meat there
from the Queen of Fairy more than I could eat.
The Queen of Fairy is bravely clothed in white
linens, and in white and brown cloathes, and the

where they were. Whereupon they began to bless themselves.
But one of their number (being, it seems a little more bold and
confident than his companions) said * horse and hattock with my
top,' and immediately they saw the top lifted up from the
ground, but could not see what way it was carried, by reason
of a cloud of dust which was raised at the same time." From
the many persons mentioned in such narratives, a hasty reader
might derive the notion that there have been many witnesses of
the miracle— while the reality only is, that many people to
whom it was told are said to have believed it, The miraculous
elevation of the top reminds one of an old Edinburgh anec-
dote about the elevation of a much more important article — a
lawyer's wig. It was in the days when members of the Bar
lived in the closes of the High-street, that one of them in full
costume for attendance in the parliament-house, having peeped
out of his library window to enjoy a stray current of air or a
sunbeam that had lost its way, felt his wig removing itself from
his head, and, looking up, beheld it ascending towards the clouds.
The lawyer being sceptical, desired a solution of the phenomenon,
and readily found it. Some -children at the window of a floor
above were amusing themselves too much in the way marked
out for censure by Hogarth, in letting down a kitten by a long
string. The animal coming near the wig naturally clutched at
it. The children seeing this, pulled the kitten hastily back, lest
they should get into a scrape, and hence the rapid and myste-*
rious ascent of the wig.

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 277

King of Fairy .is a brave man, well-favoured and
broadfaced. There were elf-bulls rowting and
sqoillingup and down there, and affrighted me."

The belief that a human life might be shortened
by the melting df a waxen image — as old in litera-
ture as the days of Ovid, and perhaps much older
in superstition — was probably never explained in
so lively a form as in the following morsel of these
confessions. It would almost seem as if the sor-
ceress had a ferocious delight in the accuracy with
which the child was represented, and the consequent
air of reality in its symbolical torture and destruc-
tion :

" Bessie Wilson in Auldearn, and Margaret
Wilson, &c, and I, made a picture of clay to de-
stroy the Laird of Park's male children. John
Taylor brought home the clay in his plaid neuk —
his wife brake it very small like meal, and sifted it
with a sieve, and poured in water among it in the
devil's name, and wrought it very sore like * rye-
bowt,' and made of it a picture of the laird's sons.
It had all the parts and marks of a child, such as
head, nose, hands, foot, mouth, and little lips. It
wanted no mark of a child, and the hands of it
folded down by its sides. It was like a ' pou ' or
a slain grice [sucking-pig]. We laid the face of
it to the fire till it strakened [shrunk] and a clear

278 TRIALS POE WITCHCRAFT.

fire round about it till it was red like a coal. After
that we would roast it now and then. Each other
day there would be a piece of it well rosten. The
Laird of Park's whole male children by it are to
suffer, if it be not gotten and broken, as well as
those that are born and dead already. It was still
put in and taken out of the fire in the devil's
name. It was hung upon an knag. It is yet in
John Taylor's house, and it has a cradle of clay
about it."

" Elspet Chisholm, &c., and I, went into Alex-
ander Cumming's lit-house [dye-hou9e] in Auldearn.
I went in the likeness of a kea [daw], the said Els-
pet Chisholm was in the shape of a cat. Isabel
More was a hare, and Maggie Brodie a cat. We
took a thread of each colour of yarn that was in the
said Alexander Cumming's lit-vat, and did cast
three knots on each thread in the devil's name; and
did put the threads in the vat widdershins* about'
in the vat in the devil's name, and thereby took

* Widdershins is a word in perpetual use in witch trials, and
is still employed in some parts of Scotland, chiefly in refer-
ence to superstitious legends. It means against the course of
the sun. The sound at once carries one to the German writer
and schein or wnne, away from the light or the sun. A root
common with German words is not a remarkable] thing to note
about any English or Lowland Scottish tertn. But in this
instance it is curious, as the word widdershins has no cognates,
or etymological connexions as they might be called, but is pre-

TBliliS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 279

the whole strength of the vat away, that it could
litt nothing but only black, according to the colour
of the devil, in whose name we took away the
strength of the right colours that was in the vat."

An account of the elf-attendants furnished by the
infernal court to these earthly retainers, is, besides
its innate vagueness, rendered fragmentary by the
partial decay of the record. Still, enough remains
in the fragments carefully dovetailed by the editor
of the Criminal Trials to give one a more real
notion of the familiars of the witch class, than it
would be easy to find elsewhere :

" Three would meet — but sometimes a covin,
sometimes more, sometimes less — but a grand meet-
ing would be about the end of each quarter. There
is thirteen persons in each covin, and each one of
us has a spirit to wait upon us when we please to
call him. I remember not all the spirits' names,
but there is one called Swein, whilk waits upon the
said Margaret Wilson in Auldearn. He is still
clothed in grass green, and the said Margaret has a
nickname called 'Pickle nearest the wind' The
next spirit is called * Borie,' who waits upon Bessie
Wilson in Auldearn; he is still clothed in yellow,

served with its peculiar application, as a Greek or Hindoo word
might be. Such a disconnected relic of the common Teutonic
root would seem, when its meaning is remembered, to be a
remnant of the times of the old Pagan sun-worship.

280 TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

and her nickname is ' Through the corn yard! The
third spirit is called ' The Roaring Lion,' who waits
upon Isobel Nicol in Loch Low, and he is still
clothed in sea green. Her nickname is * Bessie
Mule* The fourth spirit is called ' Mac Hector, 9
who waits upon Jean Martin, daughter to the said
Margaret Wilson. He is a young-like devil, clothed
still in grass green. Jean Martin is maiden to the
covin that I am of, and her nickname is ' Over the
Dyke with it. 9 The name of the fifth spirit is
'Robert the Rule' and he is still clothed in sad
dunn, and seems to be a commander of the rest of
the spirits, and waits upon Margaret Brodie in Aul-
dearn. The name of the sixth spirit is called ' The
Thief of Hell wait upon herself 9 and he waits also
on the said Bessie Wilson. The name of the
seventh spirit is called the * Red Rieverf and he is
my own spirit, that waits upon myself, and is
still clothed in black. The eighth spirit is called
4 Robert the Jackis 9 still clothed in dunn, and seems
to be aged. He is ane gleiket gowket spirit. The
woman's nickname that he waits on is € Able and
Stout 9 The ninth spirit is called ' Laing, 9 and the
woman's nickname that he waits upon is ( Bessie
Bauld! The tenth spirit is called ' Thomas a'Fairie 9
There will be many other devils waiting upon our
master devil; but he is bigger and more awful than

TRIALS TOR WITCHCRAFT, 281

the rest of the devils, and they all fear him. I will *
ken them all one by one from others when they
appear like a man."

" When we raise the wind, we takes a rag of
cloth and wets it in water, and we takes a beetle*
and knocks the rag on a stone, and we say thrice
over:

« < I knock this rag upon this stane,
To raise the wind in the deril's name,
It shall not lie until I please again/

" When we would lay the wind, we dry the. rag,
and say thrice over:

" < We lay the wind in the devil's name,
-Not to rise till we like to raise it again/

And if the wind will not lie instantly, we call upon
our spirit, and say to him, ' Thief, thief, conjure the
wind and cause it to lie/ We have no power of
rain, but we will raise the wind when we please.
He made us believef # # # that there was no god
beside him.

•' As for elf arrow-heads, the devil shape* tlciem
with his own hands, and then delivers th ¥Wn to A£-

* This is not to be understood as an animal of Va the • ca ^^ B \L

' Who •**

group, but a wooden roller for beating cloth. >re f Iho** ^ .^

acquainted with Scottish legal facetue, will rcmd ^neiflto* 1 * v^e
<T esprit about a litigation concerning a diamiM ota&toe*^ 1 ^{ot
much of the wit rests on the supposition that >mts,vt *** * ^*w <&**
beetling of cloth, and must have been one of fiese »& *et? c °*
meter. yUnter

f Fragmentary. *h Beer

/

/ /

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

boys, who whyttes and dightes* them like a packing-

needle.f # # * Those that dightes them are little

ones, hollow and bow-backed. They speak gowstie

like. When the devil gives them to us, he says:

u ' Shoot these in 1117 name,

And they shall not go haill name.*

And when we shoot these arrows, we say,

" * I shoot yon man in the devil's name;
He shall not wone haill name;
And this shall be also true,
There shall not be ane bit of him liew.'f

. " We have no bow to shoot with, but spang
them from the nails of our thumbs. Sometimes we
will miss — but if they touch, be it beast, man, or
woman, it will kill, though they had a jack upon
them."

This account of the elve weapons answers well to
the little sharp, neat flint darts which are found in
considerable numbers in the north of Scotland and
Scandinavia. The northern antiquaries have classi-
fied the flint weapons, and have followed them by
an arrangement of the bronze. The flint armory
of Britain adjusts itself only to a secondary branch
of this system. We are here inquiring, however, not
as to these weapons with reference to the time when

* Cleans, or gir«s the finish— evidently from the same root as
the German deichm.
t Some sentences very fragmentary in this part.
J Life.

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 283

they were used, but as to the condition in which
they were — no one can tell how many centuries after
the time of their actual use — when the witches of
Auldearn were charged with using them. These
little fiendish-looking weapons are of the true shape
of the barbed dart, as it may be seen in ancient archi-
tectural decoration and symbolical sculptures They
are often finished or " dichted " to perfection, the
barbs corresponding with each other, and the point
as sharp as that of a lancet. Their construction by
the mere operation of chipping, indicates a peculiar
manual art wrought to high perfection.*

* If the accounts given of the strange contents of the eve
near Torquay, called Kent's Hole, are to be entirely reli'xl on,
it seems to have been a sort of manufactory of flint weapons.
"Here," says the narrator, "in sinking a foot into the soil we
came upon flints in all forms, confusedly disseminated through
the earth, and intermixed with fossil and human bones, the
whole slightly agglutinated together by calcarious matter de-
rived from the roof. My collection possesses an example of this
aggregation in a mass consisting of pebbles, clay, and bone, in
the midst of which is imbedded a fine blade of flint— all united
together by a sparry cement.

"The flints were in all conditions, from the rounded pebble
as it comes out of the chalk, to the instruments fabricated from
them, as arrow and spear heads and hatchets. ,. Some of the
flint blocks were chipped only on one side, such /is had probably
furnished the axes; others in several faces, representing planes
corresponding exactly to the long blades foivnd by their side,
and from which they had been evidently sliced off. Other peb-
bles, still more angular and clipped at all points, were, no doubt,
those which yielded the small arrow-heads. T^ese abounded in by
far the greatest number. Small, irregular splinters, not referrible
to any of the above divisions, and whifjh seem to have been

/

284 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

When these beautiful little weapons, made of a
stone unknown in the district, were turned up by
the plough, it was not wonderful that the peasantry
should immediately invest them with a supernatural
origin and use. Hence they are still known by a
name which may be found alluded to in the oldest
Scottish topographical writers, of elfry heads, or elf
arrow-heads.* There are many traditions of their
having been found in the bodies of cattle suddenly
stricken, and still darker rumours of their discovery
in human victims. When they are found, it is the
practice ^of the country to hide them carefully, as
tLeir accessibility to light and air is supposed to put

struck off in the operation of detaching the latter, not unlike
the imall chips in a sculptor's shop, were thickly scattered
through the stuff, indicating that this spot was the workshop
where the savage prepared his weapons of the chase, taking ad-
vantage of its cover and the light."— (Account by Mr. McEnery,
quoted in Wilton* s Archaeology of Scotland, p. 187.) It is worthy
of remark, that the districts where these arrow-heads are chiefly
found — such as Aberdeenshire, with its primitive rock—being
destitute of flint, the article seems to have been imported from
manufactories in the chalk ranges, like Birmingham or Sheffield
goods at the present day.

* See the description of Scotland in Bleau's Atlas, where
there are accurate representations of these curious weapons.
Its author does net appear to have abjured supernatural no-
tions on their origin: " Solo hoc, lapilli hi mirandi, quod casu
aliquando in agrio, in pubficis tritisque viis reperiantur, nun-
quam autero investigando inveniantur; hodie fortasse reperias,
ubi heri nihil, item/ a meridie, ubi horis antemeridianis omnia
vacua; et haee, ut plurimum, sudo ccelo cestivis diebus." —
Bleau Theatruin Scotia, p. 105.

TBIAL8 FOR WITCHCRAFT. 285

them at the disposal of the fiends who use them.
It is difficult to conjecture how they can have been
attached to a shaft, and it is probable that their deadly
efficacy depended on the slightness of the adhesion,
so that the barbed flint remained in the wound.
Their shafts, of course, however attached to them,
have rotted away many centuries ago. Their ap-
pearance, therefore, does not indicate how they
could have been discharged by ordinary human
means, and favours ideas about supernatural agency.
It was hence, with a just adaptation to all ap-
pearances and to the prevailing notions of the die-.

trict, that the Auldearn witches said they used
bows, but discharged the deadly weapon by a jerk
of the thumb.

So much by way of comment on the application
of these wild confessions to facts and looal super-
stitions ; the episode may, perhaps, be a slight re-
lief from extravagances which are growing mono-
tonous. At the risk, however, even of tiring the
reader with absurdities, some more extracts from
these self-accusers' tales are offered. We leave them
slaying. The extract whidh follows begins with
a healing charm; but we fjnd them resting not long
in the beneficent humour /and returning at intervals
to the destructive. Th6 narrative introductory of
the following fragment of a rhynre is so extremely

\

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT.

broken and scattered, as but barely to indicate that
the intended charm is of a sanatory character:

u • He put the blood to the blood till all npstood—
The lith to the lith tiU all took with;
Our lady charmed her dearly son
With her tooth and her tongue.
And her ten fingers.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Haily Gaist.'

And this we say thrice over, stroaking the sore,
and it becomes whole. 2ndly. For the bean shaw,
. or pain in the haunch : * We are here three
\ maidens charming for the bean*straw.* The man
>*)f the midle earth, blew beaver, land feaver, maneris
off stooris, the Lord fieigged the feind with his
hoiy candles and yeird foot stone.f There she sits,
and R>ere she is gone — let her never 'come here
again.' *3rdly. For the fevers we say thrice over:
1 1 forbid: the quaking fevers, the sea fevers, the land
fevers, ^rld all the fevers that ever God ordained
out of th^ head, out of the heart, out of the back,
out of th<£ sides, out of the knees, out of the thighs
— from ike points of the fingers to the nibs of the
toes, out sball the fevers go — some to the hill, some
to the pass, some to the stone, some to the stock.

* The disease called in one place bean, or bone shaw, and in
the other straw, k the sciatica.

t As these expressions were not intended to be intelligible in
any language that exists, or did exist, they are given in the
original spelling. *

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 287

In Saint Peter's name, Saint Paul's name, and all

the saints in heaven, in the name of the Father, the

Son, and the Holy Ghost.'

" And when we took the fruit of the fishes from

the fishers, we went to the shore before the boat

could come to it; and we would say upon the shore

side three several times over:

" ' The fishers are gone to the sea,

And they will bring hame fish to me; /

They will bring them hame intil the boat, /

But they shall get of them but the smaller sort.'

So we either steal a fish or buy a fish, or get a fish J

from them one or ma. And with that we have all

the fruit of the haill fishes in the boat; and tkfe

fishes that the fishermen will have themselves 4riHl

be but froth. /

" The first voyage that ever I went with* the rest
of our covins was to the ploughlands, and there we
shot a man betwixt the plough stilts; and he
presently fell to the ground upon his nose and his
mouth; and then the devil gave me an anew and
caused me to shoot a woman in that field, whilk I
did, and she fell down dead.

" In winter, 1660, when M*. Harie Forbes, mi-
nister of Auldearn} was sick, we ma* aae bag of
the gall's flesh, and gutts oi toads, pickles of bear
(barley), pairings of the pails of fagers and toes;
the liver of a hare and bits of dote We steeped

\

288 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

this altogether all night, among water all hacked
through other. And when we put it among the
water Satan was with us, and learned us the words
following to say thrice over. They are thus:

" ' He is lying in his bed— he is lying sick and sore,

Let him lie intil his bed two months and three days more ;
Let him lie intil his bed — let him lie intil it sick and sore.
Let him lie intil his bed months two and three days more;
He shall lie intil his bed — he shall lie in it sick and sore,
He shall lie intil his bed two months and three days more.'

" When we had learned all these words from the

v devil as said it, we fell all down upon our knees,

\ with our hair down upon our shoulders and eyes,

Juid our hands lifted up upon the devil; and said

the\foresaid words thrice over to the devil, strictly

against master Harie Forbes."

The i}ext extract, and it shall be the last, relates to
metamorphoses — the most prominent and universal
of all witch superstitions :

u The dogs will sometimes get some bites of us
when we are in hares, but will not get us killed.
When we turn out of a hare's likeness in our own
shape, we will have the bites, and. rives, and scratts
in our bodies. When we would be in the shape of
cats, we did cry, and wraw, and riving, and, as it
were, whirrinr on one another; and when we come
to our own sHpes again, we will find the scratts
and rives in ou skins very sore*

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 289

" When one of us or more is in the shape of
cats, and meets with any others our neighbours, we
will say, ' Devil speed thee, go thou with mej and
immediately they will turn to the shape of an cat
and go with us. When we will be in the shape of
crows, we will be larger than ordinary crows, and
will sit upon branches of trees. We went in the
shape of rooks to Mr. Robert Donaldson's house —
the devil and John Taylor and his wife went to the
kitchen chimney and went down upon the cruik.
It was about Lammas in 1659; they opened an
window, and we went all into the house, and got
beef and drink there."

It is not wonderful that the cat should be a
favourite shape of metamorphosis. The silent celerity
of motion in these domesticated wild beasts, their
consequent mysterious apparitions and vanishings,
their assemblages and solemn communings with
each other; their strange cries, so unpleasantly imi-
• tative of the human voice in fright or fury; their
proverbial tenacity of life, which frequently startles
those who have left them for dead by their re-
appearance alive; and in general, their strange
amalgamation of the savage and the domestic ani-
mal have ever made them objects o interest, as
the worship of the Egyptians, the kistory of the
Knights Templars, the charges against the Walden-

VOL. I. U

190 TRIALS FOS WITCHCRAFT.

nan sorcerers, and finally the northern witch trials,
exemplify to us.

The latest judicial proceedings for witchcraft in
Scotland have an intimate and ludicrous connexion,
with the habits of these animals. Aano inflictions
followed on them, the impression left by them is
rather in favour of the accuser, who seems, to have
been so heavily persecuted by troops of unreason-
able cats, that if he had a particle of superstition in
his nature ii could not fail to be roused to his rescue.
These irritations occurred in the year 17185, .at
Scrabster, in Caithness, and the sufferer was an in-
dividual named William Montgomery, by trade a
mason. His account of the matter, when claiming
judicial protection against the powers of darkness,
is ridiculous enough, and not unnatural; many
occupants of houses with small sunny suburban
patches of garden-ground attached to them, Jwrve
suffered from similar inflictions. He says r

44 Your petitioner's house being infested with
cats these three months by-past — viz;, September,
October, and November — to that degree that my
wife was affrighted terribly at the fearful and un-
natural none in my absence for most of these
months foresiid at Mey, and sent five several times
to me to repair home, or else she would leave the
house and flit to Thurso; and my servant- woman

TRIALS FOB WITCHCBAFT. 291

was so affrighted fey the said cats that she left 1x17
service- abruptly befose terra, and would by no
means serve me longer; and your petitioner having
returned home, was several nights disturbed by
these cats, and five of them one night at the fire-
side where the servant-woman only was, she cried
out 'the cats- were speaking among themselves;'
and particularly on Friday, the 28th of November, /'s,

having got in at a hole in a chest I then saw her,*

/

when I watched an opportunity to cut off her head /

when she put it out at the said hole, and having
fastened my sword in her neck, which cut her, nor j
could I hold her; at last, having opened tile ches*„,
my servant William Geddes, having fixed my dirk
in her hinder quarter, by whicH stroke sh** was
fastened to the chest — yet after all she escafjed oat
of the chest with tfte» dirk in her hinder quarter —
which continued there till I thought by many
strokes I had killed her with my sword; and! having
cast her out dead she could not be found next
morning, though we* arose early to see what had
become of her. And further, about four or five
nights my servant being in bed, cried out, *That
some of these cats had come Jn on him/ — and
having wrapped the plaid about the cat I thrust my

* Meaning a cat. Grammatically, his vengeance would ap-
pear to be launched against the servant-woman.

u2

r

/

\

292 TRIALS TOR WITCHCRAFT.

dirk through her belly, and having fixed the dirk
in the ground, I drove at her head with the back
of an axe until she was. dead, and being cast out
could not be found next morning."

Though Mr. Montgomery's statement is some-
what incoherent, his measures seem to have been
energetic. The real marvel of the case, however,
^ does not come from him, but from the statement of

a local judge. The lord advocate, Robert Dundas,
hearing that wonderful discoveries had been made in
the far north, and apprehensive probably of the re-
currence of one of the ferocious outbreaks against
elderly females which had so often disgraced the
country, desired a special report of the matter, and
directed the local judge to leave it in the hands of
the law officers of the crown. The sheriff in his
report made the following wonderful statement:

-«• There was no further thought of this affair
from Pecember; that the representation was not
given in until the 12th of February last; that one
Margaret Nin Gilbert, in Owst, living about one
mile and a half distant from Montgomery's house,
was seen by some of her neighbours to drop at her
own door one of her legs from the middle; and she
being under bad fame before for witchcraft, the leg,
black and putrified, was brought to me, and imme-
diately thereafter I ordered her to be apprehended
and incarcerated."

TBIALB FOB WITCHCBAFT. 293

But this was not all. The sheriff enclosed a
document which he called the confession of Nin
Gilbert, in which there are these statements:

" Being interrogated if ever there was any com-
pact between her and the devil, confessed that as
she was travelling some long time byegone in an
evening, the devil met with her by the way in like-
ness of a man,, and engaged her to take an oath with
him, which she consented to ; and that she said she
knew him to be the devil ere he parted with her.
On being interrogated if ever the devil appeared
afterwards to her, confessed that sometimes he ap-
peared afterwards in the likeness of a great black
horse, and other times riding oh a black horse, ajid
that he appeared sometimes in the likeness of a
black cloud, and sometimes of a black hen. Being
interrogated if she was in the house of William
Montgomery, mason, in the burnside of Scr^bster,
especially on that night, &e., when that house was
dreadfully infested with several q*ts, to that de-
gree that W. M. foresaid was obliged to use sword,
dirk, and axe in beating and fraying av/ a y these
cats, answered that she was bodily present there,
and that the said M. had broke her leg either
by the dirk or axe, which leg sincfe has fallen
off from, the other part of her body; and that she
was in the likeness of a feltered cat night foresaid

r

/

294 TRIALS FOE WITCHCRAFT.

in the said house: and that Margaret Olsone was
then in the likeness of a cat also, who being stronger
than she, did cast her on Montgomery's dirk, when
her leg was broken." *

It is satisfactory .to know, that if the local autho-
rities were in their zeal eager to institute criminal
proceedings in this instance, they were checked by
the interference of the crown lawyers.

The reader is now, perhaps, possessed of a suf-
ficient quantity of characteristic scenery from the
Scottish trials for withcraft. It is difficult to say
what they teach. They must be left almost as they
are found, a mass of wild incoherences, incapable
of being classified and arranged. Their occasional
picturesque darkness, and accompaniments of the
ludicrously horrible, are not the creation of vivid
imaginations revelling in eccentricity. Even in the
midst of the most grotesque confession, something
comee forth more indicative of the habitual thoughts
of an aged female than of the proper poetical attri-
butes pf a demon. We may feel an imaginary thrill
when the power of darkness appears as a black
horse, as a dark forbidding man of giant frame,
or as a cloud; but certainly he drops all his -tangible
attributes \vhen he assumes the respectable appear-

* Kirkpatricfc Sharpe's Preface to Law's Memorials, p. 100
etseq.

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 295

anoe of a hen. We may experience some recoil-
ing yet interested sensations in reading of the
metamorphoses into beasts; but -when their object ia
a design to purloin bottles of beer, beef, and legs of
roast mutton, the* mind passes at once from the ideal
to the real. Perhaps, in the remarks now to be
offered, may be found to some extent the secret
why theBe accusations and confessions possess a
certain fund of picturesqueness mixed with their
vulgarity.

It is a startling fact, and one which ought to be
boldly dealt with, that the most wonderful of these
supernatural statements are to be found, not in mere
accusations, but in confessions. To those who hold
them to be genuine spontaneous confessions of
things that really occurred, there is, -of course, no-
thing more to be said. But it is a matter on which
the sceptical reader, who cannot reject the confes-
sions as entirely either forgeries or hallucinations,
may have his difficulty, and he will only find a
solution of it in the horrible influence of torture.
From the time when King James took up this
subject, and wrote a book intended to justify his
reputation as the Solomon of the seventeenth cen-
tury, downwards, the lawyers and clergy became
imbued with the understanding of certain doc-
trinal characteristics of witchcraft, which they
had found in Del Rio, Sprenger, and the other

296 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

scientific authorities on the forbidden art. When
they found a witch, they believed that she acted
according to the method laid down by these autho-
rities, just as a student of medicine, when he satisfies
himself of the existence of typhus or scarlatina,
believes that it will develop the symptoms set forth
by the professor of Nosology. To a narrative, there-
fore, of circumstances corresponding with these
doctrines, confession was demanded, and, under the
influence of torture, yielded/ It was surely not to
be anticipated that people of the class and character
of these unfortunates could preserve their constancy

* Those who would have the prototypes of a great portion of
the confessions of the Auldearn witches, may consult Reginald
Scott's eight chapters, which he writes with reluctance, and
does not particularly recommend for perusal; Del Bio, Disquisi-
tiones Magic©, p. 74 ; Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, p. 256-7,
a little thick duodecimo volume, which is a complete ency-
clopaedia of diablery, and has the name Magica de Spectris, et
Apparitionibus Spirituum (Leyden, 1656); Dialogue de la
Lycanthropie; Histoire veritable et memorable de ce qui c'est
passe* sur l'Exorcisme de trois Filles possedees (Paris 1623).
To these may be added the more recent Amber Witch, evidently
the production of a person well read in this sort of lore. The
Incubus, well known to all who have read books on diablery,
is painfully conspicuous in these Scottish trials. They repeat
frequently a physiological peculiarity of the Evil One in a certain
frigiditas, which is not in accordance with popular notions of his
dwelling-place, but is in entire and striking coincidence with
what is laid down in the authorities above referred to. If Mr.
Montgomery had read such books, he would have found his
conflict with the cats prefigured in the little book called Magica,
&c, where the conclusion of the onslaught on the cats is " quad
postea in fseminas versse, gravia vulnera compertas sunt acce-
pisse." P. 292.

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 297

through inflictions which sometimes broke down
the firmest minds embarked in the holiest cause,
and forced apostacy on the most enthusiastic cham-
pions of religious faith. When even a few among
the men of strong enthusiasm and lofty purpose,
whose fate is inscribed in the martyrology, could be
so borne down, is it wonderful that aged females of
questionable character, and a. few recluse men who
had frightened themselves by the unexpected results
of rash chemical experiments, should nearly all yield?
The tortures inflicted on Urban Grandier, in the vain
attempt to extract a confession of sorcery, rendered
him who endured them illustrious for his undaunted
courage; but Grandier had in view the influence
of his order — his spotless fame as a priest — the love
of truth — and, by his own account, the danger of
passing to judgment with a falsehood on his tongue :
he had last and not least the proud satisfaction of
baffling the cruel enemies who had vowed that they
should find the means of condemning him from his
own lips. One less resolute would, in the moment
when the overwrought spirit was flickering for
release, have faintly assented to the whole horrible
tale put together by his persecutors, and thus have
left, as the Scottish witches have, a distinct narrative
of diabolical experiences, to puzzle philosophers with
a psychological mystery.

298 TBIALS FOR WnXSBBCRAFT.

The inflictions on many of the Scottish victims
were sometimes no less horrible than those borne fey
Grandier; and, in one or two instances, they were
endured with a firmness nearly as great. The
return to Scotland of King James with his Danish
bride, was an occasion for a series of aocosstiara,
followed up by the most Tefined tortures. Of his
romantic journey, so little in accordance with his
usual character, the king was extremely proud; and
lie did not deem it at all wonderful that the
powers of darknesB should adopt the occasion fcr
endeavouring to strike a blow at his sacred person.
Though usually a good-natured man, his intense
selfishness and vanity made him hard, relentless,
and savage towards those who gave themselves up
to the awful crime of plotting against their anointed
king; and the criminal records of Scotland are
marked by many dark traces of his sanguinary
vindictiveness. The present instance, too, wbbml
excellent opportunity for exercising his marveUaau
acuteness in the discovery of deep mysteries, aawl
with the aid of the boots and the «ord he did
succeed irr divulging a strange history, A certain
•Geiles Duncan was Tumoured to have been present
at a great sabbath of witches in the church of
North Berwic, when Satan presided in *tbe pulpit
It was said that they had gone there "to the num-

TKIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 299

ber of 200, and that they all Trent together to sea,
each one in a riddle or sieve— and that they all
went into the same very substantially with flagons
of wines, making merry and drinking by the way
in the same riddles or sieves to the kirk of North
Berwic^ Geiles played upon a trump, or jews-
harp; and a contemporary says, that " these con-
fessions made the king in a wonderful admiration,
and sent for the said Geiles Duncan, who, upon the
like trump, did play the said dance before the king's
majesty, who, in respect of the strangeness of these
matters, took great delight to be present at their
examinations."*

This Geiles Duncan had been brought to con-
fession by torture in the pilliwinkies or pilniwin-
kies, a species of thumb-screw — " and binding or
wrenching her head with a cord or rope." The
inquisitors did not, of course, attribute the con-
fession to the torture, but to their discovery during
its infliction of the devil's marks on her body,
" which, being found, she confessed that all her
doings was done by the wicked allurements and
enticements of the devil, and that she did them by
witchcraft." Agnes Sampson was subjected to the
same torture, and with exactly the same result. It

* Newes from Scotland. A true Discourse of the Apprehen-
sion of sundry Witches.

300 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

is observable that these women, wheif they found
that the king took so intense an interest in the
matter of their accusation as personally to examine
them, became extremely communicative, and mixed
up their relations with some judicious flattery —
such as, that the reason why the devil so hated the
king was, because his majesty was the greatest
enemy he had in the world ; but the royal heart
was too entirely petrified to be softened even with
this skilful solvent.

We have more full particulars of the infliction of
torture on a male wizard named Fian, who acted as
registrar to the gang. The inquisitors began " by
thrawing of his head with a rope, whereat he would
confess nothing. Secondly, he was persuaded by
fair means to confess his follies, but that would
prevail as little. Lastly, he was put to the most
severe and cruel pain in the world, called the boots;
who, after he had received three strokes, being in-
quired if he would confess his damnable acts and
wicked life, his tongue would not serve him to
speak." This was attributed to certain charmed
pins ; and when they were removed, the doctor, in
the king's presence, subscribed his confession.

The doctor seems, like the females, to have ex-
pected grace of his sovereign, but, finding that he
had no chance for life, he made his escape. On

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 301

being recaptured he denied everything, " notwith-
standing that his own confession appeareth remain-
ing in record under his own handwriting, and the
same thereunto fixed, in the presence of the king's
majesty and sundry of his council — yet did he
utterly deny the same."

Next follows a horrible description, which we
take from the curious pamphlet already cited. It
was printed as a justification of the king, or rather
an eulogy on him, for his conduct on the important
occasion:

" Whereupon the king's majesty, perceiving his
stubborn wickedness, conceived and imagined that
in the time of his absence he had entered into new
conference and league with the devil his master ;
and that he had been again newly marked, for the
which he was narrowly searched; but it could not
in any way be found. Yet for more trial of him
to make him confess, he was commanded to have
a most strange torment, which was done in the
manner following. His nails upon all his fingers
were riven and pulled off with an instrument called
in Scottish a turkas, which in England we call a
pair of pincers; and under every nail there was
thrust in two needles over even up to the heads.
At all which torments notwithstanding, the doctor
never shrunk any whit ; neither would he then

i

302 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

confess it the sooner for all the tortures inflicted
upon him. Then was he with all convenient speed
by commandment conveyed again to the torment
of the boots, wherein he continued a long time,
.and did abide so many blows in them, that his legs
were crushed and beaten together as small as might
be; and the bones and flesh so bruised that the blood
and marrow spouted forth in great abundance,
whereby they were made unserviceable for ever.
And, notwithstanding all these grievous pains and
cruel torments, he would not confess anything;
so deeply had die devil entered into his heart,
that he utterly denied that which he before
avouched ; and would say nothing thereunto but
this, that what he had done and said before was
only done and said for fear of pains which he had
endured.!'

Aleson Balfour's execution, in 1594 r would have
passed unnoticed in the crowd r but that her con-
fessions were adduced in evidence against the mas-
ter of Orkney, for- attempting to kill his brother
by witchcraft and poison. She made her confession
after forty-eight hours of the " vehement torture
of the caschiel&ws." This instrument ia supposed
to have been an. iron, boot, heated gradually by a
movable chafer; but we shall see that a prisoner
was sometimes kept for several days under the

n

TBIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 303

operation, and we may presume that it was rather
an instrument of constraint than of active infliction.
Afesan's* age was not mentioned, but she may be
supposed to have passed the most robust period of
Hfe, since her husband, by profession a tailor, was
eighty-one years old* The treatment of this family
was a terrible refinement of cruelty. Her old
husband, " together with her eldest son: and her
daughter r were all kept at once and at the same
instant in ward beside her, and put to tortures at
the same instant time; the father being in the long
irons of fifty stone weight; the son galled in the
boots with fifty-seven strokes ; m<J the daughter,
being seven years old, put in the pilniwinkies — to
this effect, that her said husband and bairns being
so tormented beside her, might move her to make
any confession for their relief!" So* say the plead-
ings recorded in the trial of the master of Sinclair.*
We are then told as to the confession made by
another accomplice,ThomasPalpa, thus: " The same
was in like manner extoated of him, he being kept
Bathe casehielawa eleven, days and eleven nights;
twice in the day by the space of fourteen days
galled in the boots — he. being naked in the mean
time and scourged with tows (or ropes) in such
sort that they left neither 'flesh nor hide on him —
* FHcalrn, i, 376. •

304 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

in the extremity of which torture the said pre-
tended confession was drawn out of him."

The confessions so extorted were adduced as evi-
dence against the master of Orkney, and he was
acquitted, his counsel scornfully directing attention
to the cruelties which produced them. But they had
been in the mean time fatally efficacious against the
poor people who had uttered them. Aleson Bal-
four, however, showed spirit and courage at the clos-
ing scene. At the heading hill in Kirkwall, where
she was taken to be burned, she made a last solemn
declaration, and found a notary-public courageous
enough to attest it. " She declared and took upon
her soul and conscience, as she would answer at the
day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts
shall be disclosed, that she was as innocent, and
would die as innocent, of any point of witchcraft
as a bairn new born ;" and being asked by the
parson of Ropher how she had been induced to
make confession in the castle of Kirkwall, she
answered i " That the time of her first deposition
she was tortured divers and several times in th$
caschielaws, and sundry times taken out of them
dead and out of all remembrance either of good
or evil. As likewise her goodman being in the
stocks, her son tortured in the boots, and her
daughter put in the pilniwinkies, where-through

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 305

she and they were so vexed and tormented, that
partly to eschew a greater torment and punishment,
and upon promise of her life and good deed by the
said parson, falsely against her soul and conscience
she made that confession, and not otherwise, for the
whilk she asked the Lord mercy and forgiveness."
She was put to death, adhering " constantly" to
this statement; and, though her firmness did not
avert her own fate, when it was found to bear on
that of the scion of a noble house, it was allowed
its full influence.

Such are a few specimens of the manner in which
the marvellous confessions of the witches were ex-
tracted.* The subject is not so pleasing as to invite
one to further elucidation. If there be any who,
after such instances as these, hold that the long and
minute confessions of these poor creatures, as they
are now recorded, were actually uttered by them,
whether from the influence of diseased imagination,

* Among some sensible and humane remarks on witchcraft
confessions, by Sir George Mackenzie — who has not always
enjoyed a reputation for humanity — the following passage,
coming from the head of the criminal prosecution department,
in the time of witch trials, is very instructive: " Most of these
poor creatures are tortured by their keepers, who, being per-
suaded they do God good service, think it their duty to vex
and torment poor prisoners; and I know, ex ceriissimd acientid,
that most of all that ever were taken, were tormented after this
manner; and this usage was the ground of all their confession."
— Laws and Customs in Matters Criminal, p. 87.

VOL. I. X

306 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

or as a faithful record of events which took place,
he must be left in his opinion — it would be useless
to attempt to influence it by evidence.

A glance over the history of this melancholy
subject, shows that in Scotland, as in other countries,
these witch panics, with their consequent tortures
and slaughters, came in great pulsations. In con-
necting them' with historical events, we find, in the
first place, that so far as our records bear, they fol-
lowed the Reformation. It might be inferred from
this, that there is a. certain amount of latent super-
stition in the half-civilised mind ; and that if it is not
led into comparatively safe channels by persons of
knowledge and authority, it stagnates, and, accumu-
lating, breaks its bounds in a destructive torrent.
On a general aspect of the case, such a view seems
plausible. But it would need support from a fuller
knowledge than we possess ere it could be finally
adopted. We have not readily the means of know-
ing to what extent ecclesiastical proceedings were
carried out in earlier times, while, in the later, the
records of our criminal courts afford us ample know-
ledge. The monkish annalists of Scotland amplify
their fabulous narratives with frequent tales of witch-
craft, showing it to be in their own time a common
belief; as, for instance, when they tell us how the
life of King DufiUs was attempted by the melting

TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT. 307

of a wax image, and record the incidents in the
history of Macbeth.* We know, also, that if prose-
cutions for witchcraft were rare in Scotland during
Catholicism, they were abundant in other lands.

The multitude, however, of these persecutions
during the first century and a half after the Refor-
mation, is certainly a scandal pretty equally distri-
buted over all the Protestant bodies. If Puritanism
took the sway in New England and some other
places, the most violent inflictions in Scotland came
from the two monarchs who were the chief oppo-
nents of Puritanism — James VI. and Charles II.
The period least signalised by so unhappy a cha-
racteristic was that of the Protectorate. The
Cavaliers would say that the great demon had put
down all the small ones. Cromwell had a mind
certainly sufficiently under spiritual impressions, but
here, as in other matters, we see the wonderful wis-
dom with which be conducted the practical business
of this world, however much he might have another
in his thoughts. It was his business, with a stern
and strong hand, to restrain all useless persecution.
Terrible and remorseless as he was when cutting
down the crop of Irish Papists, that he might plant
the land with what he deemed a better seed, he was

• The history of the origin of Macbeth, as described by
Wyntoun, is an application of the Doctrine of the Incubus.

308 TRIALS FOB WITCHCRAFT.

never cruel without a definite object* nor would he
permit cruelty in others, unless it aided his own
projects. Thus, unless it could be shown that the
state was to be disturbed by them, hallucinations
might have their free course, people might see visions
and dream dreams, and old women might ride on
broomsticks or go to sea in sieves. He required to
see some more substantial evil ere he considered it a
dignus vindice nodus.

How much greater was his wisdom than that of
his witty and learned contemporary, Selden, who,
with a mocking half-credulity, says, " The law
against witches does not prove there be any; but it
punishes the malice of those people that use such
means to take away men's lives. If one should pro-
fess that, by turning his hat thrice and crying buz,
he could take away a man's life, though, in truth,
he could do no such thing; yet this were a just law
made by the state, that whoever should turn his hat
thrice, and cry buz, with an inclination to take away
a man's life, shall be put to death."* Cromwell
thought and did far otherwise. Men might whirl
their hats and cry buz until they were tired, ere he
meddled with them — and the consequence was that
they did tire.

A belief in witchcraft lingered for a considerable
♦ Table Talk.

[J J

TRIALS FOR WITCHCRAFT. 309

time among the educated classes in Scotland. " The
last execution of a Scottish witch," says Mr. Kirk-
patrick Sharpe, " took place in Sutherland, a.d.
1722, the sentence having been pronounced by the
sheriff depute Colonel David Ross, of Little Dean.
The old woman belonged to the parish of Loth, and,
among other crimes, was accused of having ridden
upon her own daughter, transformed into a pony
and shod by the devil, which made the girl ever
after lame both in hands and feet, a misfortune en-
tailed upon her son, who was alive of late years.
The grandmother was executed at Doroch ; and it
is said that, after being brought out to execution,
the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly
warming herself by the fire prepared to consume
her, while the other instruments of death were
making ready."*

The penal statutes against witchcraft were re-
pealed in 1 736. In 1743, the Associate Presbytery,
the predecessors of an ecclesiastical body which at
this day embraces a large portion of the educated
community of Scotland, in an act for the renewal
of the covenant, enumerate, among other national
sins, that " The penal statutes against witches have
been repealed by the parliament, contrary to the
express law of God; for which a holy God may be
* Preface to Lawe's Memorials, p. 107.

VOL. I. Y

310 TBIAL8 FOR WITCHCRAFT.

provoked in a way of righteous judgment, to leave
those who are already ensnared to be hardened more
and more; and to permit Satan to tempt and seduce
others to the same wicked and dangerous snare/'
This may be held as the latest public and authori-
tative announcement in Scotland that there exists
a crime called Witchcraft, which ought to be sup-
pressed by punishment.

END OF VOL. I.

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